tennis

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A game played with rackets and a light ball by two players or two pairs of players on a rectangular court, as of grass, clay, or asphalt, divided by a net. Also called lawn tennis.
2. n. Court tennis.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A very old and elaborate ball-game played by two, three, or four persons in a building specially constructed for the purpose. The court (96 feet by 32) is surrounded by a wall, from which a sloping roof called the penthouse extends on three sides to an inner wall 7 feet high; and a net 5 feet high at the ends to 3 in the middle is placed across the court. The first player (the server) hits a ball with a racket so that it strikes the penthouse or the wall above it, and rebounds into the court on his opponent's side of the net. The opposing player (the striker-out) has to strike the ball back into the server's court before it strikes the ground, or on its first bound. The player who is the first to drive the ball into the net or beyond the prescribed boundary loses a stroke. If a player fails to return the ball before it strikes the ground twice, a chase is noted against him on the marked floor. This does not count at the time, but a stroke may be won or lost from it by subsequent play. When two chases have been made, or when the score of one side reaches 40, the players change ends. Strokes are won and lost in various other ways besides those mentioned above (as by driving the ball into certain openings in the inner wall), the game being extremely complicated. The mode of scoring (by 15, 30, 40, and game, with deuce and advantage) has been taken from this game by lawn-tennis. Tennis arose in Europe during the middle ages, and was very popular. It is now played under the name of court-tennis, to distinguish it from lawn-tennis. See racket and lawn-tennis.
2. n. Same as lawn-tennis.
3. To drive, as a ball in playing tennis.

Wiktionary

1. n. sports A sport played by either two or four players with strung racquets, a 2½" (6.4 cm) ball, and a net approximately 3 feet high on a clay, grass, or cement court.
2. n. dated A match in this sport.
3. v. intransitive, dated To play tennis.
4. v. transitive To drive backward and forward like a tennis ball.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A play in which a ball is driven to and fro, or kept in motion by striking it with a racket or with the open hand.
2. v. rare To drive backward and forward, as a ball in playing tennis.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a game played with rackets by two or four players who hit a ball back and forth over a net that divides the court