LOVE { 0 } ( Trivia # 7 )

The term ‘ love ’, meaning 0 , in tennis is derived from the French ‘ l’oeuf ’, meaning ‘ the egg ’ – an egg looking not unlike a 0. The same thinking gave rise to the use of ‘ duck ’ in cricket for a batsman’s score of 0. Scratch is the golfing term for 0, as in ‘ scratch out ’, meaning to erase. A ‘scratch golfer’ plays off a 0 handicap. Nil is a term that is rarely used outside the field of sport (one exception being the medical phrase ‘nil by mouth’, meaning ‘not to be swallowed’). Nil is a simple abbreviation of ‘ nihil ’, the Latin word for nothing.