tennis (n.)

mid-14c., tenis, name of an old and elaborate handball game for 2, 3, or 4 (ancestor of modern court tennis), played in an enclosed space specially constructed for the purpose. The name is most likely from Anglo-French tenetz "hold! receive! take!," from Old French tenez, imperative of tenir "to hold, receive, take" (see tenet), which was used as a call from the server to his opponent.

The original version of the game (a favorite sport of medieval French knights) was played by striking the ball with the palm of the hand, and in Old French was called la paulme, literally "the palm," but to an onlooker the service cry might naturally identify the game. Century Dictionary says all of this is "purely imaginary."

The use of the word for the modern game is from 1874, short for lawn tennis, which originally was called sphairistike (1873), from Greek sphairistikē (tekhnē) "(skill) in playing at ball," from the root of sphere. It was invented, and named, by Maj. Walter C. Wingfield (1833-1912) and played first at a garden party in Wales, inspired by the popularity of badminton.

The name 'sphairistike,' however, was impossible (if only because people would pronounce it as a word of three syllables to rhyme with 'pike') and it was soon rechristened. [Times of London, June 10, 1927]

Tennis-ball "ball used in tennis" is attested from early 15c.; as figurative of something or someone batted back and forth, by 1580s. The tennis-court on which the game is played is so called from 1560s. Tennis elbow identified as such by 1883, when the new ailment was much noted in newspaper columns; tennis-arm in the same sense is by 1887.

There are delicate sheaths which encase the muscles of the arm, and which may be wrenched and distorted by special exercise. Lawn tennis is peculiarly favorable to this result, and a "lawn tennis elbow" is added to the ills which nineteenth century flesh inherits. [Boston Globe, July 13, 1883]

tennis shoe is from 1884, probably short for lawn tennis shoe (by 1877).

"Anyone for tennis?" as "a typical entrance or exit line given to a young man in a superficial drawing-room comedy" [OED, 1989] is suggested by 1953.