fives
Sign in to saveFives (historically known as hand-tennis) is an English handball sport derived from jeu de paume, similar to the games of handball, Basque pelota, and squash. The game is played in both singles and doubles teams, in an either three- or four-sided court.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- type of sport
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- Commons category
- Fives (sport)
- different from
- Fives
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~21 min read
Encyclopedic overview
19 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- History
- Variants
- Eton fives
- Rugby fives
- Winchester fives <span class="anchor" id="Winchester Fives"></span>
- Warminster fives <span class="anchor" id="Warminster Fives"></span>
- Bat fives <span class="anchor" id="Bat Fives"></span>
- Courts and equipment
- Players
- Europe
- Africa
- Oceania
- Asia
- Americas
- See also
- References
- Literature
- External links
Fives (historically known as hand-tennis) is an English handball sport derived from jeu de paume, similar to the games of handball, Basque pelota, and squash. The game is played in both singles and doubles teams, in an either three- or four-sided court.
== Etymology == The origin of the name "fives" for the game is uncertain, but two main theories are commonly presented. The first is that it is derived from the slang expression "a bunch of fives" (meaning a fist); the other that an earlier form of the game, as described by Nichols, used five-a-side teams.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “fives” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.