Referee, umpire, official, judge, etc. Why are there different names rather than just one?
Umpire comes from the french nonper meaning not equal. Interestingly, many English words used to begin with ‘n’ but the letter was dropped through time because of blurring with the indefinite article ‘an’. Examples include (n)adder, (n)apple, (n)apron, (n)orange, (n)uncle.
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They’re jargon and they developed independently… sports jargon has a strong continuation pressure because there’s a lot of esoteric knowledge and an in crowd that wants you to know they’re inside the bubble.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Hence the term: inside baseball.
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And see, football and tennis and rowing have completely different terms for that.
Really makes you think.