Sport (lock)

Katie call the cops.

Dear Word Detective: I have been reading with great pleasure the ghost stories of Montague James, arguably the best British writer of such stories, ever. In one of them, “The Mezzotint,” he uses the word “sport” as a transitive verb, to mean “to lock,” as in “to lock the door.” I cannot find this definition of the word anywhere. Can you? — Lowrie Beacham.

Thanks for an interesting question. I’m a big fan of M.R. James and the classic British ghost story, and I remember first reading “The Mezzotint” when I was 14 or so and being simultaneously fascinated and thoroughly spooked by the story. “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford, also available at the website you mentioned, is another classic of the genre and a very satisfyingly creepy read. I’d take stories like these over the latest Stephen King chopfest any day, but the closest thing I’ve seen in recent years was the excellent film “The Others.” Just thinking about that movie gives me the wimwams.

The plot of “The Mezzotint” concerns a rather unusual (to put it mildly) picture, and at one point in the story the protagonist decides to play it safe and lock the thing in another room: “He took the picture by one corner and carried it across the passage to a second set of rooms which he possessed. There he locked it up in a drawer, sported the doors of both sets of rooms, and retired to bed….” This is indeed an unusual use of the past tense of the verb “to sport,” and one with its own interesting history.

Derived from the Old French “desporter,” meaning “to amuse, please, or play,” our modern English “sport” first appeared as a verb in the 15th century meaning “to amuse or entertain oneself,” with the “athletic competition” sense of both the noun and verb forms coming later. Over the next three centuries, “to sport” developed a variety of meanings, generally involving the sense of casual play or carefree activity, as in “sporting” or freely spending one’s money.

One of the senses “sport” developed was “to display, especially in an ostentatious fashion,” as we might today say “Robert showed up at work sporting a new Rolex on his wrist.” From this “display” meaning, students at English universities in the 18th century developed the slang term “to sport timber” or “to sport oak” meaning to close one’s door (made of wood, of course) as a visual signal that the occupant did not wish to be disturbed. Apparently this slang use of “to sport” had percolated into general usage by the 19th century with the simplified meaning of “to lock” a door.