The origin of Love, Duck and Nil

The term ‘love’, meaning 0, in tennis is derived from the French ‘l’oeuf’, meaning ‘the egg’ – an egg looking not unlike a 0. The same thinking gave rise to the use of ‘duck’ in cricket for a batsman’s score of 0. Scratch is the golfing term for 0, as in ‘scratch out’, meaning to erase. A ‘scratch golfer’ plays off a 0 handicap. Nil is a term that is rarely used outside the field of sport (one exception being the medical phrase ‘nil by mouth’, meaning ‘not to be swallowed’). Nil is a simple abbreviation of ‘nihil’, the Latin word for nothing.