Etymology

battledore

bat·tle·dore
B3A1T1T1L1E1D2O1R1E1

Today it means: A game played with a shuttlecock and rackets (properly battledore and shuttlecock); a forerunner of badminton. Full definition →

Middle English batildore ← Old Occitan batedor
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The story

  1. Old Occitan · derived frombatedor“beater, bat”
  2. Middle English · derived frombetel“bat, club”
  3. Middle English · inherited frombatildore
  4. English todaybattledore

From Middle English batildore, batylledore, batildure, batyldoure, batyndore, probably as a blend of Middle English betel (“bat, club”) and Old Occitan batedor (“beater, bat”).

Words from the same roots

Middle Englishbetel all →

beetle

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.