'Esport' and 'deport': what difference is there between the two words?

The Sports and Leisure Fair held in Inca is a great opportunity to talk about physical activity, health, and the different ways to enjoy free time, and it is also a good excuse to pause on two words that look very similar but have different histories: 'esport' and 'deport'. Surely the first one sounds familiar to us and the other seems taken from an old document, but both are related to an activity as human as having a good time.

When we talk about sports, we might think of a water polo match, a mountain race, or an open-water swimming competition, but also a weekend excursion or some time swimming in the pool. In many of these activities, the smartwatch is already almost another companion: it counts our steps, calculates distances, records the pace, and informs us if we have achieved the set goals.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with wanting to take care of your health or enjoying the satisfaction of beating a record. However, these tools also invite us to observe ourselves with the eyes of a coach: there is always a figure to improve or a milestone to complete. Sometimes, it seems that walking is not enough if we do not take enough steps, nor is resting if we do not do it optimally. At this point, the history of the words can help us look at the present with a bit of distance.

Medieval origin

'Deport' is a heritage word in Catalan, documented since the Middle Ages and related to recreation and leisure. It originates from the Latin 'deportare', which meant 'to transport'. In Romance languages, the verb acquired a figurative sense related to entertaining or distracting oneself. From this, forms emerged such as 'deport' in Catalan or 'desport' in Old French, associated with leisure and pleasure.

As Xavier Torrebadella and Alexandre Planas explain in the article From deport to esport and from esport to deport: more than a terminological discussion, thi word 'deport' already appears, for example, in a letter written in 1408 by Bernat Metge, secretary to King Martin I. In it, he explains that a tower has been acquired for the “health, pleasure e deport of our person”. The phrase associates 'deport' with health and pleasure, and shows us that this idea of leisure was already part of the medieval Catalan vocabulary.

Naturally, we should not imagine the Middle Ages as an idyllic time of walks and free time. Living conditions were very different from current ones, and the possibilities for enjoying leisure depended on the social position and the circumstances of each person (as, in fact, also happens today). What interests us here is the history of the word and the meaning it acquired.

'Esport', on the other hand, arrived through another route. It comes from the English 'sport', which derives from the Old French 'desport'. Therefore, both forms share a distant origin, but have arrived in Catalan via different paths. In English, the meaning evolved from the idea of entertainment toward the regulated and competitive physical activities that we associate with modern sport. These practices spread from Great Britain throughout the 19th century and caused the word to also spread to name them.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Catalan adopted 'esport', and Pompeu Fabra fixed its form in the 1917 Orthographic Dictionary. Meanwhile, 'deport' had fallen almost entirely into disuse, as had happened with related forms in other Romance languages.

What meaning do these two words have today? The Dictionary of the Catalan Language of the Institute for Catalan Studies defines 'esport' as a 'bodily exercise of agility, skill, or strength that is practiced individually or in a group, with a recreational or competitive purpose and following established rules'. The definition, therefore, includes both the competitive and the recreational dimension.

TERMCAT, for its part, proposes a more specific terminological distinction. It considers both forms appropriate, but differentiates 'esport' (sport), understood as a regulated and institutionalized bodily activity that requires specific and methodical physical training, from 'deport' (leisure activity/recreation), an unregulated activity done for pleasure, generally outdoors. Walking along a path or going for a bike ride for a while would be examples of this. The same organization points out, however, that currently 'deport' has a very limited use.

A history of its own

It is not, therefore, a matter of one word being ‘correct’ and the other not, but rather that both have their own history and can designate different nuances depending on the context. The DIEC includes a general meaning of ‘esport’ that covers the recreational side, while the TERMCAT establishes a more precise distinction between regulated activities and those done for pleasure.

This distinction also helps us to understand the variety of practices that we associate with physical activity today. We can go out by bike to train or to discover paths, and we can go swimming to improve technique with the goal of competing or simply spending time in the pool.

In any case, the history of the words ‘deport’ and ‘esport’ allows us to observe how words evolve at the same time as the activities they designate. One, of heritage origin, has been relegated to very minority uses; the other, incorporated from English, has expanded its meaning and today embraces both the recreational and the competitive dimension. They are two words with a shared origin and different paths that explain to us a small part of the history of the language and of the way in which we have named an activity as human as moving, playing, or going out for a walk.