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racket

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English has two words spelled racket: the bat, borrowed from French, and the noise, of uncertain origin.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

  • /ˈɹækɪt/[4]

racket1 bat for tennis etc.

Etymology

The bat is inherited from Middle English raket,[5][6] probably borrowed from Middle French raquette,[2][7][8][9] which the OED records for a paddle-shaped tool apparently used to scrape a ship's bottom (1388), an implement for striking a ball (mid-15th century) and a snowshoe (1557), and takes as apparently a variant of the word for the palm of the hand.[2] Etymonline, Barnhart and the MED give the forms Old French rachette, requette and rechete, palm of the hand, racket.[10][6][5] Most dictionaries trace the French word to Arabic رَاحَةْ اَلْيَد (rāḥat al-yad, “palm of the hand”),[11][9][12][1][6][7][13] Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and Ayto through Italian racchetta,[12][9][1] the American Heritage Dictionary through Medieval Latin rascheta (“palm”);[11] Barnhart thinks the French word was perhaps reinforced by Spanish raqueta.[6] Etymonline notes that the Arabic origin has been doubted,[10] and Dictionary.com marks it as only perhaps.[8] The OED takes the Italian (recorded before 1536), the Spanish and Dutch raket (1525) all to be from French in the sporting sense.[2] Another proposal, by H. Gillmeister, derives the English word through an unrecorded Flemish form from Middle French rachas (“a kind of ball game”) or Old French rachacier (“to hit a ball back”); the OED discusses it without adopting it.[2][13] Compare French jeu de paume (“tennis”), literally "play with the palm".[10][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A game in which players struck a ball, or cast dice, to and fro, perhaps with the palm of the hand: in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (about 1385; manuscript before 1425), "Kanstow playen raket, to and fro".[5][2][6]

Semantic evolution

The OED finds the early English records remarkable because they name the game rather than the implement and are earlier than the French sense "implement for striking a ball"; it is uncertain whether the game was first played with a racket or with the palm, bare or gloved.[2] The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explains the name by the ball having first been hit with the hand.[3] The bat itself is recorded in Dunbar's poems (1500–20) according to Barnhart,[6] about 1500 according to Etymonline and Word Origins,[10][3] and about 1544 in the OED.[2] The old game survives in the plural rackets (from 1704), and French rackets is a borrowing from English.[2][3] In North America the word was used of a latticework snowshoe from 1609 and of a lacrosse stick from 1791.[2][12] In Scots it meant a hard blow (1710), and in ornithology a racket-shaped feather (1887).[2] A verb, to strike with or as if with a racket, appeared in 1599 and is now obsolete.[2][7][9] The spelling racquet is also used.[6][7]

Timeline

  • c. 1385 – raket, a game played to and fro, in Chaucer.[5][2][6]
  • c. 1544 – the bat used to strike a ball.[2] Barnhart finds it in Dunbar's poems (1500–20).[6]
  • 1535 – a military sling (obsolete).[2]
  • 1599 – verb, to strike with a racket.[2]
  • 1609 – a snowshoe, in North America.[2]
  • 1704 – rackets, the game.[2]
  • 1791 – a lacrosse stick.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A bat with a handle and an oval or round frame strung with a network of cords, used to hit the ball or shuttlecock in tennis, badminton, squash and similar games.[7][14][2]
  2. rackets (treated as singular): a ball game for two or four players in a four-walled court.[2][9]
  3. (North America) A snowshoe with a broad latticework frame.[2][12]
  4. A lacrosse stick.[2]

Verb

  1. (obsolete) To strike with or as if with a racket; to bandy.[7][9][2]

Word family

  • rackets

racket2 loud noise; illegal scheme

Etymology

The noise is of uncertain origin, probably imitative of a clattering sound.[2][7][10][9][12][1] Klein compared Scottish Gaelic racaid (“noise, disturbance”),[15][10] but the OED takes the Gaelic word to be borrowed from English.[2][10] Dictionary.com takes the word as a metathesis of the dialect word rattick, related to rattle.[8] Partridge suggests that it may have been prompted in part by the rattle of dice in the old game called racket.[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

Uproar, disturbance, din: 1565, in a letter of Archbishop M. Parker.[2] Merriam-Webster and Barnhart give the same year,[7][6] Etymonline the 1560s.[10]

Semantic evolution

From the noise the word passed to a fuss or loud protest (1644, to raise a racket),[2] and in the 18th century to a noisy party (1745) and the bustle and dissipation of society (1771);[2][12] the verb, to lead a lively social life, is dated 1650 by the OED and 1609 by Merriam-Webster.[2][7] In late 19th-century America a racket was also a waltz-like dance.[2][17] The criminal sense, a fraudulent line of business, is first recorded in Vaux's dictionary of flash language: Green's Dictionary of Slang and Barnhart date it 1812, the OED 1819, and Etymonline gives 1785.[17][6][2][10] Its origin is unclear: the OED suggests it grew out of the social sense, with reference to the pleasure taken in a successful swindle, and rejects the story that it came from selling tickets for bogus social events;[2] Barnhart and Etymonline suggest the "game" sense of racket1, perhaps helped by rack-rent, extortionate rent, and Etymonline also the noise made to distract a pickpocket's victim.[6][10] In the 1920s, in the United States, it came to mean an enterprise of organized crime (1925), and the rackets organized crime in general;[2] racketeer followed in 1928.[6] A weaker sense, an occupation or line of business, is recorded from 1880.[2][10] In Scots and English dialect the word also meant a drinking bout.[18]

Timeline

  • 1565 – a loud noise, uproar.[2][7][6]
  • 1617 – verb, to make a noise; to move about noisily.[2]
  • 1644 – a loud protest, a fuss.[2]
  • 1650 – verb, to lead a lively social life.[2] Merriam-Webster dates this sense to 1609.[7]
  • 1745 – a noisy party.[2]
  • 1771 – the bustle of society; dissipation.[2]
  • 1812 – a dishonest scheme or form of fraud, in Vaux's flash vocabulary.[17][6] The OED dates it 1819.[2]
  • 1880 – an occupation or line of business.[2]
  • 1925 – a criminal enterprise, and the rackets organized crime.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A loud, confused noise; a din: The neighbours' dog kept up a racket all night.[7][14][2]
  2. A noisy commotion or fuss.[2][7]
  3. An illegal or dishonest scheme for making money, such as extortion or fraud.[14][2]
  4. (informal) An occupation or line of business: He has been in the insurance racket for twenty years.[14][2]
  5. Lively social activity; a round of excitement.[7][2]

Verb

  1. To make a loud noise; to move about noisily.[2][9]
  2. To lead a lively social life, often with about or around.[7][2]

Word family

  • racketeer
  • racketeering
  • rackety
  • racketry

References

  1. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  12. ^ a b c d e f Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  13. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  14. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  15. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  16. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  17. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  18. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)