the.com/court
Where justice is blind but the seating chart definitely isn't.
means A place where legal disputes are formally heard and decided, or the formal attention paid to a ruler, lover, or favor-granter.
from From Old French 'cort,' tracing to Latin 'cohors/cohortis' — originally an enclosed yard or courtyard, then the retinue and soldiers gathered in it. From 'yard full of people around someone important,' the word split into two paths: the royal entourage sense (courting favor, courtship) and the formal gathering for judgment sense (law court) — both still trading on the old image of people assembled around a central authority.
- same root
- courtesy, courtyard, and courtship all share this ancestor
- tennis link
- tennis courts named for the same enclosed-yard idea
- double duty
- you can court a lover and face court simultaneously
- royal origin
- originally meant the monarch's attendants, not judges