TENNIS AND FIVES.
[To TIM EDITOR OF TER " SPILCTATOR."] SIR,—In his letter in the issue of June 8th on the derivation of these words Mr. Candler antiquem renovat d,olorem. The subject has been discussed for about forty years, and Mr. Candler throws, I fear, no new light on the subject. Nor does lie succeed in his attempt to surround Minsheu's derivation of " tennis " from tomes = " take the ball " with additional plausibility. Dr. Chance's humorous suggestion of " the game of St. Denys" is equally plausible. Mr. Candler, as others have done, begs the question when lie says, " The server's call is regularly Latinized as accipe or wipe." There is no evidence whatever, and M. Jusserand has investigated the point, that the server used any call at all. Moreover, to be logical, one would have to explain a score of other phrases in the Latin tennis colloquies of Erasmus and Cordier, any of which has as good a claim to be regarded as a tennis phrase as has accipe. The suggestion that fives : tennis : : 5 : 10 long ago occurred to the present writer. It is better than Strutt's arithmetical explanation,
which refers it to the number of players. Bnt this is all that can be said for it. It is to be hoped that no correspondent will waste your space by unearthing other derivations, equally plausible, from the bygone controversy, such as that " tennis " = "the game of tens." The derivation of " tennis " and " fives " is to be looked for along a quite different line.—I am,.
Sir, &c., THE WRITER OF THB ARTICLE.
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