what defines a sport

Cricket and rugby seemed to require british rule in order to take root. The council of europe charter on sport uses the following definition : Hard-fought contests, it was thought, persuaded the gods to grant abundant harvests of corn (maize) and yams. Enthusiasts of baseball denied its origins in british children’s games such as cat and rounders and concocted the myth of abner doubleday, who allegedly invented the game in 1839 in cooperstown, new york. The word measure, which once connoted a sense of balance and proportion, began to refer almost exclusively to numerical measurements. Competitions were never as simple as they seemed to be. From the islamic middle east across the indian subcontinent to china and japan, wrestlers—mostly but not exclusively male—embodied and enacted the values of their cultures. Baseball, for example, boomed in cuba, where nemesio guilló introduced the game to his countrymen in 1863, and in japan, where horace wilson, an american educator, taught it to his japanese students in 1873. Influence generally overwhelmed british; Fairs and seasonal festivals were occasions for men to lift stones or sacks of grain and for women to run smock races (for a smock, not in one). An adult realizes with a laugh that he has uttered an unintended pun. Among the various peoples of sub-saharan africa, wrestling matches were a way to celebrate or symbolically encourage human fertility and the earth’s fecundity. National organizations developed to standardize rules and regulations, to transform sporadic challenge matches into systematic league competition, to certify eligibility, and to register results. (it was not until the 1950s, however, that major league baseball planted its first franchises on the west coast. ) By the time of the renaissance, sports had become entirely secular, but in the minds of the 17th-century czech educator john amos comenius and other humanists, a concern for physical education on what were thought to be classic models overshadowed the competitive aspects of sports. In the course of the 19th century, modern forms of british sports spread from the privileged classes to the common people. Neither action is premeditated, and both are at least relatively free of constraint. Indeed, the celebrated 14th-century persian pahlavan (ritual wrestler) maḥmūd khwārezmī was both. In fact, the rule books for games such as basketball are hundreds of pages long. New games, such as basketball, volleyball, and team handball, were consciously invented to specifications as if they were new products for the market. Archaeological evidence also indicates that ball games were common among ancient peoples as different as the chinese and the aztecs. When indian wrestlers join an akhara (gymnasium), they commit themselves to the quest for a holy life. As devout hindus, they recite mantras as they do their knee bends and push-ups. These rules transform spontaneous play into games, which can thus be defined as rule-bound or regulated play. More often than not, the men who strained and struggled understood themselves to be involved in a religious endeavour. Sport definition : This definition, while straightforward, opens up a complex dialogue about what qualifies as a sport. The burghers of medieval towns were welcome to watch the aristocracy at play, but they were not allowed to participate in tournaments or even, in most parts of europe, to compete in imitative tournaments of their own. The second type of play is regulated. Among the kole, it was the kin of the bride and the bridegroom who wrestled. In buenos aires, for instance, british residents founded clubs for cricket and a dozen other sports, but it was the buenos aires football club, founded , that kindled argentine passions. It must also be understood that the sports that have most excited the passions of humankind, as participants and as spectators, have required a great deal more physical prowess than a game of shuffleboard. Chinese wushu (“military skill”), which included armed as well as unarmed combat, was highly developed by the 3rd century bce. Hunters, too, took their pleasures on horseback. Are you a student? The sports of medieval europe were less well-organized than those of classical antiquity. Between the 12th and the 16th century, the dangerously wild free-for-all of the early tournament evolved into dramatic presentations of courtly life in which elaborate pageantry and allegorical display quite overshadowed the frequently inept jousting. The most useful definitions are those that clarify the relationship of sports to play, games, and contests. In southern nigeria, for instance, igbo tribesmen participated in wrestling matches held every eighth day throughout the three months of the rainy season; The first is spontaneous and unconstrained. In yabusame, accuracy was paramount. When town met town in a challenge of skill, the companies of crossbowmen and longbowmen marched behind the symbols of st. An athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc. Among the many games of north africa was ta kurt om el mahag (“the ball of the pilgrim’s mother”), a berber bat-and-ball contest whose configuration bore an uncanny resemblance to baseball. Tutsi high jumpers of rwanda and burundi soared to heights that might have seemed incredible had not the jumpers been photographed in flight by members of adolf friedrich zu mecklenburg’s anthropological expedition at the turn of the 20th century. Some danger remained even amid the display. Game is close to sport , and often stresses mischievous or malicious fun. From the british isles, modern sports (and the amateur rule) were diffused throughout the world. Since basketball and volleyball were both invented under the auspices of the ymca (young men’s christian association), it seemed reasonable for ymca workers to take the games to china, japan, and the philippines, where the games took root early in the 20th century. It was, however, association football’s destiny to become the world’s most widely played modern sport. Wrestling’s forms and functions varied from tribe to tribe. Grand feasts were part of the program, and drunkenness commonly added to the revelry. Contests for runners and jumpers were to be found across the length and breadth of the continent. In their struggle against “pollution,” they strictly control their diet, sexual habits, breathing, and even their urination and defecation. Indeed, 15th- and 16th-century elites preferred dances to sports and delighted in geometric patterns of movement. It is certain, however, from the rich literary and iconographic evidence of all ancient civilizations that hunting soon became an end in itself—at least for royalty and nobility. Unambiguous definition is nonetheless a prerequisite to practical determinations about what is and is not an example of play. See examples of sport used in a sentence. Neither are professional athletes if their only motivation is their paycheck. In turkey, where the composite (wood plus horn) bow was an instrument of great power, archers competed for distance. Recalcitrant children compelled by their parents or teachers to compete in a game of football (soccer) are not really engaged in a sport. As early as the late 17th century, quantification became an important aspect of sports, and the cultural basis was created for the concept of the sports record. To the ends of the earth, cricket followed the union jack, which explains the game’s current popularity in australia, south asia, and the west indies. “play,” wrote the german theorist carl diem, “is purposeless activity, for its own sake, the opposite of work. ” humans work because they have to; Rugby football flourishes in other postcolonial cultures, such as new zealand and south africa, where the british once ruled. Even so, they were more active than their contemporaries in heian japan during the 8th to 12th centuries. Like the highly evolved civilizations of which they are a part, traditional asian sports are ancient and various. Humanistically inclined englishmen and germans admired the cultivated florentine game of calcio, a form of football that stressed the good looks and elegant attire of the players. It must of course be understood that even the simplest sports, such as weightlifting, require a modicum of intellectual effort, while others, such as baseball, involve a considerable amount of mental alertness. Both were scientifically designed to fulfill a perceived need for indoor games during harsh new england winters. As long as wars were fought with bow and arrow, archery contests continued to serve as demonstrations of ready prowess. Notably, the japanese samurai practiced many forms of archery, the most colourful of which was probably yabusame, whose mounted contestants drew their bows and loosed their arrows while galloping down a straight track some 720 to 885 feet (220 to 270 metres) long. At its core, a sport can be defined as an organized, competitive physical activity that involves individuals or teams competing against one another. Influenced by the ballet, which developed in france during this period, choreographers trained horses to perform graceful movements rather than to win races. Since it is impossible to imagine a time when children did not spontaneously run races or wrestle, it is clear that children have always included sports in their play, but one can only speculate about the emergence of sports as autotelic physical contests for adults. The nascent bourgeoisie of the middle ages and the renaissance amused itself with archery matches, some of which were arranged months in advance and staged with considerable fanfare. Shuffleboard is a good example of the first; The word record, in the sense of an unsurpassed quantified achievement, appeared, first in english and then in other languages, late in the 19th century, but the concept went back nearly 200 years. Among the diola of the gambia, adolescent boys and girls wrestled (though not against one another) in what was clearly a prenuptial ceremony. They play because they want to. Children taking part in sport , with sports used to describe multiple activities, e. g. Hunters are depicted in prehistoric art, but it cannot be known whether the hunters pursued their prey in a mood of grim necessity or with the joyful abandon of sportsmen. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the british expelled the french from canada and from india and extended british rule over much of africa. Sports are part of every culture past and present, but each culture has its own definition of sports. There are rules to determine which actions are legitimate and which are not. Through the ages, sports heroes have demonstrated awesome strength, speed, stamina, endurance, and dexterity. The tutsi and hutu of rwanda were among the peoples who staged contests between females. Although the traditional sport of boxing flourished throughout the 18th century, it was not until 1743 that boxer-entrepreneur jack broughton formulated rules to rationalize and regulate the sport. The amateur athletic association, which emphasized track-and-field sports, was founded in 1880, the amateur rowing association in 1882. These equestrian games may in fact be the most distinctive asian contribution to the repertory of modern sports. Even before the civil war, the game had been taken over by urban workers such as the volunteer firemen who organized the new york mutuals in 1857. A game, competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill that is played or done…. “athletics” became popular after oxford and cambridge held their first track-and-field meet in 1864. In other words, chess and basketball are contests. Play stresses the opposition to earnest without implying any malice or mischief. Football (soccer) is the world’s most popular ball game, but, wherever american economic and culture influence has been dominant, the attraction to baseball, basketball, and volleyball has tended to exceed that to football. Tournaments were the jealously guarded prerogative of the medieval knight and were, along with hunting and hawking, his favourite pastime. Athletes trained systematically to achieve their physical maximum. Sports, physical contests pursued for the goals and challenges they entail. French and italian fencers such as the famed girard thibault, whose l’académie de l’espée (“fencing academy”) appeared in 1628, thought of their activity more as an art form than as a combat. The singular term sport is used in most english dialects to describe the overall concept, e. g. The wrestler’s strength was always more than a merely personal statement. Football needed only the presence of british economic and cultural influence. The favourite sport of the peasantry was folk football, a wild no-holds-barred unbounded game that pitted married men against bachelors or one village against another. In the real world, as a practical matter, motives are frequently mixed and often quite impossible to determine. Peasant women participated freely in the ball games and footraces of medieval times, and aristocratic ladies hunted and kept falcons, but middle-class women contented themselves with spectatorship. Seeking status as well as diversion, middle-class employees of british firms followed the upper-class lead. Within the world of sports, the emphasis on aesthetics, rather than achievement, was never stronger. Leapfrog, chess, “playing house,” and basketball are all games, some with rather simple rules, others governed by a somewhat more complex set of regulations. Nandi runners of kenya’s rift valley seemed to run distances effortlessly at a pace that brought european runners to pitiable physical collapse. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. Sebastian, and other patrons of the sport. It is unlikely that the 7th-century islamic conquest of north africa radically altered the traditional sports of the region. A somewhat arbitrary distinction can be made between wrestling and the many forms of unarmed hand-to-hand combat categorized as martial arts. It was not unusual to combine the skills of the wrestler with those of a mystic poet. Prayers, incantations, and rituals of purification were for centuries an important aspect of the hand-to-hand combat of islamic wrestlers. Japanese kenjutsu (“techniques of the sword”) became kendō (“the way of the sword”). Basketball, invented in 1891 by james naismith, and volleyball, invented four years later by william morgan, are both quintessentially modern sports. Football and rugby are the most popular sports in england. Get britannica premium for only 24. 95 - a 67% discount! Sport applies especially to the arousing of laughter against someone. The first two games are competitive, the second two are not. At istanbul’s okmeydanı (“arrow field”), the record was set in 1798 when selim iii’s arrow flew more than 2,900 feet (884 metres). For the nuba of southern sudan, ritual bouts, for which men’s bodies were elaborately decorated as well as carefully trained, were the primary source of male status and prestige. The development of modern sports having begun in late 17th-century england, it was appropriate that the concept of the sports record also first appeared there. Technicians sought to perfect equipment. Sport means all forms of physical activity, which through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or. Male champions were married to their female counterparts. See full list on britannica. com In the early modern era, as unarmed combat became obsolete, the emphasis of asian martial arts tended to shift back toward religion. As games, chess and basketball are obviously different from leapfrog and playing house. From the gamut of games played by the upper and middle classes, the industrial workers of europe and latin america, like the indigenous population of africa, appropriated football as their own. In almost every instance, the first to adopt football were the cosmopolitan sons of local elites, many of whom had been sent to british schools by their anglophile parents. Much less well known in the west are varma adi (“hitting the vital spots”) and other martial arts traditions of south asia. In other tribes, such as the yala of nigeria, the fon of benin, and the njabi of the congo, boys and girls grappled with each other. Those that require at least a minimum of physical skill and those that do not. Northern europeans emulated them. Rowing (crew), one of the first sports to assume its modern form, began to attract a following after the first boat race between the universities of oxford and cambridge (1829) and the inauguration of the henley regatta (1839). By the time the national league was created in 1876, the game had spread from coast to coast. No one can say when sports began. As can be seen in mughal art of the 16th and 17th centuries, aristocratic indians—like their counterparts throughout asia—used their bows and arrows for hunting as well as for archery contests. It was, however, only in the post-world war ii world that u. s. Cultural variation among black africans was far greater than among the arab peoples of the northern littoral. The prophet muhammad specifically authorized horse races, and geography dictated that men race camels as well as horses. Mounted hunters demonstrated equestrian as well as toxophilite skills. Behind this epochal transition from renaissance to modern sports lay the scientific developments that sustained the industrial revolution. Typical of the place of sport within a religious context was the spectacle of 50 sturdy turks who wrestled in istanbul in 1582 to celebrate the circumcision of the son of murad iii. Encumbered by many-layered robes and sequestered in their homes, the japanese ladies were unable to do more than peep from behind their screens at the courtiers’ mounted archery contests. Ball games were rare, but wrestling of one kind or another was ubiquitous. During the restoration and throughout the 18th century, traditional pastimes such as stick fighting and bullbaiting, which the puritans had condemned and driven underground, gave way to organized games such as cricket, which developed under the leadership of the marylebone cricket club (founded 1787). Only then did basketball and volleyball become globally popular. The minimal controls on mayhem imposed by broughton were strengthened in 1867 by the marquess of queensberry. Of the armed (as opposed to unarmed) martial arts, archery was among the most important in the lives of asian warriors from the arabian to the korean peninsulas. It is voluntary and uncoerced. Stick fights, which seem to have been less closely associated with religious practices, were common among many tribes, including the zulu and mpondo of southern africa. He displayed his prowess before lords, ladies, and commoners and profited not only from valuable prizes but also from ransoms exacted from the losers. The number of participants in a particular sport can vary from hundreds of people to a single individual. At the tilt, in which mounted knights with lances tried to unhorse one another, the knight was practicing the art of war, his raison d’être. The board games scrabble and monopoly will do to exemplify the second. At one of the last great tournaments, in 1559, henry ii of france was mortally wounded by a splintered lance. A final distinction separates contests into two types: Behind these changes lay a new conception of rationalized competition. While the aesthetic element survives in sports such as figure skating, diving, and gymnastics, the modern emphasis is generally on quantified achievement. A child sees a flat stone, picks it up, and sends it skipping across the waters of a pond. The violence of the game, which survived in britain and in france until the late 19th century, prompted renaissance humanists, such as sir thomas elyot, to condemn it as more likely to maim than to benefit the participants. In germanic areas a pritschenkoenig was supposed to simultaneously keep order and entertain the crowd with clever verses. Sports that originally began elsewhere, such as tennis (which comes from renaissance france), were modernized and exported as if they too were raw materials imported for british industry to transform and then export as finished goods. It was not unusual for contests in running, jumping, cudgeling, and wrestling to be offered for the lower classes who attended the match as spectators. Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Its unarmed techniques were especially prized within chinese culture and were an important influence on the martial arts of korea, japan, and southeast asia. In fact, the transition from renaissance to modern sports can be seen in a semantic shift; If ball games were contests rather than noncompetitive ritual performances, such as the japanese football game kemari, then they were sports in the most rigorously defined sense. During the age of imperialism, explorers and colonizers were often astonished by the prowess of these “primitive” peoples. One can win a game of basketball, but it makes no sense to ask who has won a game of leapfrog. Play is autotelic—that is, it has its own goals. This shift can often be seen in the language of sports. Sports moments nicknames quiz That it cannot simply be assumed that they were contests is clear from the evidence presented by greek and roman antiquity, which indicates that ball games had been for the most part playful pastimes like those recommended for health by the greek physician galen in the 2nd century ce. A more plausible date for the transformation of cat and rounders into baseball is 1845, when a new york bank clerk named alexander cartwright formulated the rules of the knickerbocker base ball club. Koura, more widely played, was similar to football (soccer). By the late 19th century, the united states had begun to rival great britain as an industrial power and as an inventor of modern sports. There are at least two types of play. The emphasis of the latter is military rather than religious, instrumental rather than expressive. The asian aristocrat’s passion for horses, which can be traced as far back as hittite times, if not earlier, led not only to horse races (universal throughout asia) but also to the development of polo and a host of similar equestrian contests.