raqueta

Forms

raqueta f (plural raquetas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French raquette, according to Corominas.^[2][3] The DLE and Wiktionary also allow racchetta as the source.^[4][1] French had the word for the palm of the hand from the early 14th century and for the racket from the 15th.^[2] The DHLF records Old French rachette in 1314 and traces it to Medieval Latin rasceta (“palm”), used by Constantine the African in the 11th century, from Arabic.^[5] The ultimate source is Arabic راحة اليد (rāḥat al-yad, “palm of the hand”).^[4][6][1] Corominas holds that it came into Romance as a learned anatomical Arabism, through France or through the medical school of Salerno, since Castilian would not have rendered the Arabic /ħ/ as /k/.^[2] He leaves open whether the ending is the Arabic construct form or a Romance diminutive.^[2] The sense “racket” grew from the ball game French jeu de paume (“palm game”), first played with the bare palm.^[7][8]

Christian Schmitt separated the anatomical Old French word from Middle French raquette (“racket”), which he takes as a back-formation from Old Picard recater (“to throw back”), from Vulgar Latin *recaptitō;^[8][6] Corriente reports the same view.^[8][6] The Italian form racheta is recorded before 1536 and the standard form before 1548.^[9]

Older guesses: Covarrubias derived it from a Hebrew verb meaning “to stretch”, the Academy in 1884 from an Arabic word for “that which throws”, and Alemany from Italian retichetta, a diminutive of Latin rete (“net”).^[10][11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A 1498 Spanish translation of Guy de Chauliac's surgery has the anatomical word: racheta que es la parte de la mano, “the racheta, which is the part of the hand”.^[13] The racket is first named in Antonio Agustín (died 1586), whose Diálogos de medallas speak of a bat with a net, “which they call raqueta”.^[2][3][14]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 gave the word with Latin reticulum, an instrument strung with cords for catching and returning the ball, and Rodrigo Caro in 1626 contrasted the rackets with the paddles of his own day.^[10][13] The 1737 Autoridades defined raqueta as a ball game and as the oval wooden frame strung with gut used to play it.^[14] In 1817 the Academy described it as the bat of the shuttlecock game, and by 1843 it also recorded raqueta as a name of the plant jaramago.^[15][16]

Alemany in 1917 recorded the croupier's rake of the gaming tables.^[12] Modern senses include the snowshoe, a player of a racket sport and, in Spain, a semicircular slip road for turning back.^[4][17][1]

Timeline

• 1314 – French rachette for the palm of the hand.^[5]
• 1498 – racheta “part of the hand” in a Spanish translation of Guy de Chauliac.^[13]
• c. 1570 – first record of the racket, in Antonio Agustín.^[3][2]
• 1592 – a poem on the ball game names hand, pala and raqueta.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it a French name.^[10]
• 1737 – the Autoridades defines the game and the racket.^[14]
• 1843 – the Academy records the plant name.^[16]
• 1890 – first record from the Americas, in Venezuela, of the shuttlecock game.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A racket: a handle with an oval frame, usually strung with a net of cords, for hitting the ball or shuttlecock in tenis, bádminton and similar games: Se compró una raqueta nueva para el torneo.^[4][1]
2. A player of a racket sport.^[4][19]
3. A ball game played with a bat (pala).^[4]
4. A wooden rake used at gaming tables to move the stakes.^[4][20]
5. A snowshoe.^[4][1]
6. (Spain) A semicircular detour on a road for turning or changing direction.^[4][17][1]
7. (botany) The plant jaramago.^[4][20]

Word family

• raquetero

Related words

• French raquette
• Italian racchetta
• English racket

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 785
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. raqueta
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. raqueta
5. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. raquette
6. ^ a b c Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 494
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. raqueta
8. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. racchetta
9. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. racchetta
10. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1246
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 897
12. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1414
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. raqueta
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 490
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 727
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 609
17. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. raqueta
18. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. raqueta
19. ^ Universidad de Murcia, NEOMA: Diccionario de neologismos del español actual (online), p. s.v. raqueta
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. raqueta