Words at Play : Top 10 Words from Place Names
A game with an upper-crust heritage.
Badminton House is the residence of the Duke of Beaufort in southwest England, and the sport is said to have been played there for the first time in 1873.
Originally it was known as "The Game of Badminton," but soon became plain old "badminton."
It's a combination of a children's game called "battledore and shuttlecock" and poona, which was played by British officers in India in the 1860s.
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