polo

Etymology

It is borrowed from Balti polo (“ball”),^[2][3][4][5] from Balti, a Tibetan language of the upper Indus valley in Kashmir,^[3][6][7] which English first knew as an Anglo-Indian word.^[3][8] The OED compares Lhasa Tibetan pulu and the related words for a ball in other Tibetan varieties,^[2][5] and Klein also compares Tibetan pulu.^[9] The Shorter Oxford instead gives a Tibetan pholo, literally "ball game".^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A team game resembling hockey, played on horseback with long-handled mallets and a ball: 1872, in the Daily News.^[2][4][8] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1835–45.^[11] Ayto relates that English travellers in Kashmir saw the game in the 1840s,^[6] and Etymonline and Weekley note that it was first played in England at Aldershot in 1871.^[3][7]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline describes it as an ancient game in South Asia.^[3] In Balti the word named the wooden ball, and the English took it over for the whole game.^[6][12] It soon spread to similar team games: water polo is recorded from 1876,^[3] and the general sense of a game resembling or derived from horseback polo, as on bicycles, from 1883.^[2][4] A polo shirt was at first one worn by polo players;^[3] Etymonline dates the term to 1892, while Barnhart finds it first in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920).^[3][8] The word was used for a polo hat from 1905, and since 1967 also for a polo-neck sweater or a polo shirt.^[2]

Timeline

• 1871 – first game in England, at Aldershot.^[3][7]
• 1872 – the horseback game.^[2][4]
• 1876 – water polo.^[3]
• 1883 – any similar team game.^[2]
• 1892 – polo shirt.^[3]
• 1905 – a polo hat.^[2]
• 1967 – a polo-neck sweater or polo shirt.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A game played on horseback by two teams, in which the players drive a small ball into the goal with long-handled mallets.
2. Any of several similar games, such as one played on bicycles; also short for water polo.
3. (chiefly British) A polo neck or a sweater with one; also a polo shirt.

Word family

• poloist
• polo-neck
• polo pony
• polo shirt
• water polo

Related words

• chukker

Usage notes

A separate word polo, from Spanish and of unknown origin, names an Andalusian flamenco song and the dance performed to it, recorded in English from about 1830.^[2][10]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press