From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishldoce_330_htennisten‧nis /ˈtenɪs/ ●●● S3 W3 noun [uncountable] DSTa game for two people or two pairs of people who use rackets to hit a small soft ball backwards and forwards over a net
Examples from the Corpus
tennis• One of their crowd dropped dead on a tennis court, but nobody died for years and years.• Originally from Plymouth, she was a very keen squash and tennis player before suffering a knee injury at skiing.• Can Andre Agassi go out there and develop tennis?• For the energetic there is snorkelling and fishing, tennis, table tennis and a pool table.• A swivel chair addressed the desk and was occupied only by a pale green tennis ball.• In the late afternoon, slow to go home, he dropped in on an elderly doctor friend and played tennis.• Judo, karate, dance, fencing, table tennis, carpet bowls and aerobics are all available.Origin tennis (1300-1400) Probably from Anglo-French tenetz! “take!, receive!” (as called out by the player first hitting the ball in tennis), from tenir; → TENANT 