“The word for a place of justice started as the Latin word for a farmyard — a court was an enclosed space, and the legal meaning came later, when rulers held audiences in the courtyards of their palaces.”
Latin cohors (genitive cohortis) originally meant an enclosed yard, a farmyard, a pen for livestock. It is from co- (together) + hortus (garden, enclosure). The word then named a division of a Roman army (a cohort — about 480 soldiers) and later, by extension, the enclosed courtyard of a building. When rulers received visitors and dispensed justice in palace courtyards, the courtyard's name transferred to the activity. The court became a place of judgment because judgment happened in a yard.
Medieval courts were literally courtyards. The king or lord sat in an open space, received petitioners, heard disputes, and rendered decisions. The physical space — open, public, visible — was part of the justice. Trials were meant to be seen. The English King's Bench and Common Pleas began as divisions of the royal curia (court), meeting wherever the king happened to be. By the thirteenth century, they settled at Westminster. The word stayed; the courtyard was roofed over.
The word split. A royal court is a center of political power — the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, the court of the Mughal emperors. A court of law is a place of justice. A basketball court is a playing surface. A courtyard is an architectural feature. The same word names four different things because all four involve a bounded, purposeful space. The farmyard enclosure is the shared ancestor.
In American English, 'court' usually means a courtroom — the legal meaning dominates. In British English, 'court' retains more of its monarchical flavor — the Court of St James's is the formal name of the British royal court. The word's meaning depends on which side of the Atlantic you stand. Both meanings trace to the same Roman farmyard, but the American court speaks law and the British court speaks protocol.
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The word 'court' is used more often for sports than for law by most English speakers. A tennis court, a basketball court, a squash court. The playing surface meaning emerged in the fourteenth century — a court was any flat, enclosed space for an activity. The legal meaning and the athletic meaning share the same architectural logic: a bounded space where rules apply and outcomes are decided.
The farmyard is still there. A court is an enclosure. Inside the enclosure, specific rules govern behavior. Outside, they do not. Whether the enclosure holds livestock, a king, a jury, or a basketball player, the word says the same thing: you are inside a boundary, and what happens here is governed.
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