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way-zaltin (Somerset) a game in which two persons standing back to back interlace each other’s arms and by bending forward alternately raise each other from the ground

hot cockles (1580) a rustic game in which one player lay face downwards, or knelt down with his eyes covered, and being struck by the others in turn, guessed who struck him

hinch-pinch (1603) a game where one person hits another softly, then the other player hits back with a little more force, and each subsequent blow in turn is harder, until it becomes a real fight

IN TOUCH

Many of our best-known sports started life in similar fashion. The earliest games of football involved one village taking on another, in violent, day-long combats where broken legs and bruised heads were common. Current slang reveals that underneath, perhaps, little has changed:

blaggudy (Wales) rough, dirty (especially of a football or rugby team)

clogger (UK slang 1970) a soccer player who regularly injures other players

sprig-stomping (New Zealand 1993) the deliberate stamping with studded boots on a recumbent rugby opponent

falling leaf a long-range shot in football which sees the ball change direction radically in the course of its flight

spaghetti-legs routine a goalkeeper’s trick employed to distract a penalty taker

SECONDS AWAY

Another of our oldest sports had similar rough-and-tumble beginnings:

clow (Winchester 19C) a box on the ear

glass jaw (US slang 1940) of a boxer with an inability to withstand a punch to the chin

haymaker (1912) an unrestrained punch usually leading to a knockout, whereby the fist is swung wide in an arc

claret christening (b.1923) the first blood that flows in a boxing match

waterboy (US police slang 1930s) a boxer who can be bribed or coerced into losing for gambling purposes

FROM LAND’S END TO BROADWAY

Wrestling, too, has become less violent and more theatrical over the years, with a terminology that dates back to its origins, supplemented by more recent slang from around the world …

falx (Tudor–Stuart) a grip round the small of the back

Cornish hug a hug that causes one to be thrown over (Cornish men were famous wrestlers)

sugarbagging the tossing of an opponent onto the canvas as if he were a bag of sugar

whizzer an arm lock trapping one’s arm against the opponent’s body from a position behind him

potato (US slang 1990) a real hit that injures, as opposed to an orchestrated, harmless one

jobber a wrestler whose primary function is losing to better-known wrestlers

broadway a drawn result (so-called because, ideally, the result makes both men bigger stars)

OVER AND OUT

Another quintessentially English game has a host of extraordinary terms, from the yorker (a ball pitched directly at the batsman’s feet) to silly mid-off (a fielding position close to and in front of the batsman). Other words have fallen out of fashion:

muttoner (Winchester College 1831) a blow from a cricket ball on the knuckles, the bat being at the time clasped by them

slobber (1851) to fail to grasp the cricket ball cleanly in fielding

bowl a gallon (Eton College c.1860) to get a hat-trick (the bowler then earned a gallon of beer)

TO THE 19TH

For the more senior sportsman, another gentler but equally demanding game with British (well Scottish, strictly) roots has been successfully exported around the world. First comes the teeing off, with all the problems that that entails:

waggle pre-stroke trial movements

sclaffing skidding the club over the grass before it hits the ball

skull to hit the ball too far above its centre

shank to hit the ball with the neck of the club

whiff a stroke that misses the ball

then the slow or fast progression down the fairway:

chilli-dip a weak, lofted shot that follows a mis-hit that has managed to hit more ground than ball (from the image of taking a taco and scooping up a helping of chilli)

fried egg a ball lying embedded in sand

golden ferret a golf stroke where the ball is holed from a bunker

mulligan a free