means A racquet sport in which two players (or two pairs) hit a ball back and forth across a net on a marked court, scoring points until one side wins.

from The name comes from Old French 'tenez!' — 'hold!' or 'take it!' — the call a server would shout to an opponent before striking the ball. English speakers heard it as 'tenetz' and eventually 'tennis.' The game itself began as 'real tennis,' played indoors with the hand before racquets arrived, long before the lawn version we know today. As for 'love' meaning zero: the charming theory is that it's from French 'l'oeuf' ('the egg,' a round nothing), but scholars treat that as folk etymology — more likely it simply meant playing for the 'love' of the game, with nothing at stake.