court

Court of law. Tennis court. Courtship. Courtyard. Courtesy. Ever notice that all of these words and phrases—and many others—include court in some form? That’s no coincidence.

The word court entered English around 1125–75. It comes from French, ultimately from the Latin cohors, variously meaning “farmyard, armed force, cohort, retinue.” More about that Latin noun cohors in the next section.

Today, if someone says they went to court, they are referring to the place where lawyers argue cases, juries weigh evidence, and judges issue sentences. (We hope they weren’t in any trouble.) The legal senses of court are among the word’s oldest, found at least by the end of the 1200s in the sense of “assembly of judges.”

Even older is the royal court. Think of those medieval princes and princesses doing their princely and princessly things in courts. Found in the mid- to late 1100s, that court originally referred to the place where a sovereign lived, as well as to an assembly that that ruler held.

Whether used of royalty and law, these early senses of court—still in use today—suggest an underlying idea of an official group gathered together in an area set aside for special purposes.

Speaking of physical spaces, many sports are played on courts, including basketball, volleyball, and tennis and other racquet sports. The original sports court, as far as the word is concerned, was for tennis. This draws on that basic sense of court as “an enclosed area.”

Dig deeper

How are the words courtesy and courtship connected to court? Courtesy (“polite behavior”), along with the adjective courteous, comes from French words meaning “having manners fitting for the court of a prince.” Fun fact: curtsy,“a respectful bow made by women and girls, consisting of bending the knees and lowering the body,” is a variant of courtesy.

Courtship stems from court in its verb sense of “to woo,” as in He courted his partner over romantic emails and text messages. Court, as a verb, can also mean “to win the favor (of another).” These senses are connected to the idea of paying court—homage, attention, and well, courtesy—to someone, as they historically would have at a court.

Learn even more words about related to court at our entries for courtier and courtesan.

In the previous section, we noted that court ultimately comes from Latin cohors. One of its meanings was “armed force”—and originally from a particular place or military camp, as if grouped, or enclosed, together. Cohors, as you may have guessed by now, is the source of the English cohort. In ancient Rome, a cohort was specifically one of the 10 divisions in an ancient Roman legion, numbering from 300 to 600 soldiers. Cohort entered English around 1475–85 and evolved to more generally mean “a group or company” and “an associate or accomplice.”

The Latin cohors also meant “farmyard.” If we break down this word, we get co- (“with, together”) and a form related to hortus, meaning “garden.” It’s not too hard to imagine a garden and a yard as enclosed area, like a court. And guess what? Those three words—garden, yard, and court—are all related. You may recognize hortus in one of its English derivatives: horticulture.