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Word of the Day: Sport
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Never trust an English teacher when they tell you a word is easy.
Myself excluded, naturally.
Let’s look at the word sport.
If you’ve already read the image copy, you’re probably surprised that “She likes to sport a nice hat in summer” because you didn’t know sport could be a verb.
Well, I’m here to tell you what your other teachers never told you: IT’S A VERB!
No, I’m not playing mind games with you, I promise.
It means to wear something or to be decorated with something, such as a medal.
Just think of all those dictators who like to play dress-up in a general’s uniform and sport all those unearned medals on their chest.
With the English language, variety is the spice of life.
The more ways you can say something, the more sophisticated you will sound.
Not only can you sport a British flag on top of your Mini Clubman, but you can also be one.
No, you cannot be a Mini Clubman. That’s silly. You can be a sport.
A person who is a sport is a generous person who is nice to be around and doesn’t complain.
Someone who rains on your parade when you want to do something cool is a spoilsport, for example.
Wait, there’s one more meaning. We can also use ‘sport’ to refer to a little boy we don’t know.
You can say, “Hey, kid or Hey, sport, what time is it?” if your Fitbit strap breaks and you lose it, for example.
Here are all the meanings together in one go: Hey sport, what sport do you like? Why are you sporting that medal on your chest? Stop crying, and don’t be a spoilsport because we’re going to McDonald’s, and you want to go to Burger King.
And you thought sport was a simple word.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 82.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.