ah Marrakech......did anyone watch that classic episode of the Apprentice on Wednesday ?? the candidates had to barter for 10 items in the 5 mile long Marrakech market

Sugar: "I'll fire the whole bloody 5 of you if I have to, I don't give a ****...."

Doubles draw is out, Aucks teams up with Delgado, first round they play Jeremy Chardy and Laurent Recouderc.

Another win for our doubles boys:  6-4 3-6 [10-8] to Aucks & Delgo!  

Sheddie wrote:

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ah Marrakech......did anyone watch that classic episode of the Apprentice on Wednesday ?? the candidates had to barter for 10 items in the 5 mile long Marrakech market

Sugar: "I'll fire the whole bloody 5 of you if I have to, I don't give a ****...."

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Brilliant episode. I was there over Xmas and it was interesting to compare haggling skills (mine are rubbish). And it was even relevant to this forum, as each team had to buy branded tennis raquets. Come to think of it, is it raquet? or racquet, or even racket?? I've gone completely blank. Can you shed any light on this one Count?

 

That's what I alway thought too, but an online dictionary says:

"A tennis racquet or racket is Standard in either spelling, but the game racquets, a four-wall game something like court tennis, is always spelled racquets in American English, rackets in British English"

... which implies that, if anything, racket is the British spelling and racquet is the American one. Not sure I believe that though!

I've noticed a big shift in the last 10 years or so in the UK. Not so long ago, "racket" was frowned upon, as if being an uneducated way of spelling the thing. Now "racket" seems to me to be the norm and - I think - the choice of newspapers etc. I've made the move from "racquet" to "racket" in recent years.

I always find a quick google comparison interesting

On Google UK there are 280,000 "racket"s and 210,000 "racquet"s
On Google.com there are 9.57m "racket"s and 6.64m "racquet"s

Suggests that both terms are still used widely (particularly considering there are other meanings for the word "racket") - and that there's not a huge UK/US difference.

If you look for "tennis racket" and "tennis racquet" on Google (which cuts out all the noisy rackets), you get a slightly different story which supports cqu being more American:

UK only: more ck's by 135,000 to 47,700
Rest of the web: more cqu's by 1.44 m to 1.09 m


As you say though, both versions are clearly used widely everywhere.