COURT vs. PITCH

Welcome back to the Daily Vitamin, everyone. I hope you are having a great day.

Today we are revisiting two words from the world of sports that are often confused: court and pitch. We use these nouns to refer to the surface where competitive sports are played.

The meaning of PITCH: the specific area or field where certain competitive sports are played, particularly sports like football (soccer), rugby, field hockey, and lacrosse. It's usually a rectangular area covered in grass or turf.

Example 1
Many years ago it was common for professional footballers to play on pitches that were often in very bad condition. Nowadays that rarely happens.

The meaning of COURT: a court is a hard-surfaced, usually rectangular, area marked or enclosed for the playing of certain sports, such as tennis, basketball and volleyball. So we often refer to a "tennis court," "basketball court," or "volleyball court," for example.

Example 2
I prefer to watch tennis when it is played on grass courts rather than clay courts.

To summarize, while both COURT and PITCH refer to areas for playing sports, COURT is more often associated with hard-surface sports like tennis or basketball, while PITCH is associated with sports played on grass or turf surfaces, like football (soccer) or rugby.

You may be wondering, "but how do we translate these two nouns into Spanish?"

Generally speaking, Court is "pista" in Spanish and Pitch (or Field, in US English) is "campo" in Spanish. However, there are exceptions. For example, "Campo de golf" in Spanish is a golf course in English... NOT a golf field or golf pitch.

We went over these two words last year. You can access that lesson at the following link: https://www.ziggurat.es/lecciones-ingles/pitch-field-vs-court/4243/

Can you come up with your own original sentence for each of these nouns? You can post your sentences on one of our social media sites (Facebook or Twitter/X) and we will give you feedback about your sentences ASAP.

All the best!

Would you like to know your level of English? You can access our free English level test at the following link: https://www.ziggurat.es/en/english-level-test-home/