racket
Definitions
General English
Accounting
- noun an illegal deal which makes a lot of money
Law
- noun an illegal business which makes a lot of money by fraud
Sports
- noun a lightweight bat with a network of strings, used in tennis, badminton, squash and similar games. The frame is usually made of wood, aluminium or graphite and the strings of gut or nylon.
Origin & History of “racket”
Racket for playing tennis (16th c.) and racket ‘noise’ (16th c.) are unrelated words. The former was borrowed from French raquette, which originally meant ‘palm of the hand’. this goes back via Italian racchetta to Arabic rāhat, a variant of rāha ‘palm of the hand’. The origins of racket ‘noise’ are not known, although the probability is that it started life as a verbal imitation of an uproar.
