Nursery

I was half-listening to the news on the radio this morning when there was a report of a cricket match at Lord's, and I heard the reporter talking about 'the nursery end of the pitch'. I knew that nursery is both a place for young children and a place where plants are grown, but what is the 'nursery' end of a cricket pitch, I wondered. In fact, it turns out that it is Nursery end, with a capital N, and only refers to Lord's cricket ground. The Nursery end, or just the Nursery, is named after Henderson's nursery (for plants), which was acquired in 1887 (see here). I did a straw poll of some colleagues who are interested in cricket and most of them erroneously thought that the Nursery referred to young, up-and-coming cricketers, because apparently this is the area of Lord's where the practice nets are located.

 

The original meaning of nursery (14th century) was a room in a house set aside for the baby and young children. It was not until the 20th century that the meaning of school for young children or kindergarten came about. Nursery as a place for plants and trees to be grown and cared for has been in use since the 16th century.

 

Nursery is related to the word nurse. Both come from the French for 'wet nurse'. In fact, the original meaning of 'nurse' was wet nurse; it came to mean a person (woman in those days) who cared for the sick later. The verb 'nourish' comes from the same word. Nourish was once a noun, too, and meant a wet nurse or nursemaid, like nurse.

Comments

[John]

Your cricketing friends might be interested in a book I read not long ago: Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados.

The author (Sandiford) recounts the significant cricketing contributions of three leading schools to the sport and the resultant impact on Barbadian politics and society in the hundred years prior to independence.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, John. I'll pass that on. I listened again to the piece on the BBC (it's here,http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9498000/9498448.stmbut I'm not sure if you can listen if you're outside the UK). They talked about a cricketing book - Twirlymen by Amol Rajan, which is about spin bowling.