sport [LME] Sport comes from a shortening of disport [ME], formed, via French, from Latin dis ‘away’ and portare ‘carry’ used in much the same way as the expression ‘to take someone out of themselves’. Sport meant any kind of entertainment, and only started to be used in the modern sense of physical activities with set rules at the end of the Middle Ages, with more formalized forms appearing in the 18th century. The sport of kings [M17th] once referred to war-making but was later applied to hunting and horse-racing.