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Wuthering Heights vocabulary
2 sport related terms
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battledore and shuttlecock
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synonyms: shuttlefeather ???
tags: [sport]
► definition
Definition:The battledore is a small hand bat, formerly made of wood, then of a skin stretched over a frame, and since of catgut strings stretched over a frame. The shuttlecock consists of a small cork into which feathers of equal size are fixed at even distances. The game may be played by one, two, or more persons. If by one person, it merely consists of batting up the shuttlecock into the air for as long a time as possible; if by two persons, it consists of batting the shuttlecock from one to the other; if by more than two, sides are chosen, and a game has been invented, and known as “Badminton.” This latter game is not a traditional game, and does not therefore concern us now.The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol II of II) (1898)
image: Alice Morse Earle. Child Life in Colonial Days (1899)
► uses
Uses:
“‘Why,’ said I, ‘Wooden-Leg, my friend, this is like playing battledore and shuttlecock; what is knocked forward with one hand is knocked back with the other. Come, tell me what I ought to do.’
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Passing through a by-street the other day I heard a little girl singing—
Shuttlecock, shuttlecock, tell me true
How many years have I to go through?
One, two, three, four, &c.
—Notes and Queries, 3rd series, iii. 87.
Alice Bertha Gomme. The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol II of II) (1898)
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he consented to play at ball with me. We found two in a cupboard, among a heap of old toys, tops, and hoops, and battledores and shuttlecocks.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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Battledores and Shuttles were advertised for sale in Boston in 1761; but they are far older than that. Many portraits of children show battledores, as that of Thomas Aston Coffin. All books of children's games speak of them. It was, in fact, a popular game, and deemed a properly elegant exercise for decorous young misses to indulge in.
Alice Morse Earle. Child Life in Colonial Days (1899)
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A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep.
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)
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But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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