Whether you love or hate sport, you’d be hard pressed not to have noticed that both Wimbledon and the football World Cup are currently playing. With that in mind, I have two words this week.

In tennis, the word love relates not to romantic love but a score of zero – she was 15-love down. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin comes from play for love, that is for the love of the game. Folk etymology also links the word with the French, l’oeuf, referring to a similarity in shape to an egg and a zero.

Moving on to football, I do enjoy seeing all the strips from different countries playing in The World Cup. This made me wonder why it’s called a strip, meaning the identifying kit worn by members of a sports team. The Oxford English Dictionary says this possibly comes from the idea of the clothes that players strip down to.

Did you know that, in my children’s book, The Clocker, the main character makes up his own words? My Books