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In the Middle Ages, tennis was a type of handball. It was played with a rather harder ball, and without rackets. It was often played indoors, and it was considered legitimate to hit the ball off a wall. Today, the medieval game is called "real tennis" to distinguish it from other forms.

The term "real" is not used to imply that the modern game is fake. According to what I am reading, it merely is used to distinguish the game from "lawn tennis," but the etymology seems very unsatisfactory to me, and I suspect the term came from the a word cognate with "royal."

There is a link below to an article on real tennis.

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14y ago

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