joste

Joust comes from Old French joste or jouste, which derives from Vulgar Latin *iuxtāre, meaning 'to come near, to approach,' from Latin iuxtā (near, beside). The word's origin has nothing to do with violence. It simply described proximity. Two men on horses riding toward each other were juxtaposed — placed beside each other. What they did when they met was not in the word.

By the twelfth century, the tournament had become the primary form of military training and social display for the European knightly class. William Marshal, the greatest knight of the twelfth century, reportedly won over five hundred ransoms in tournament fighting — captured knights paid their captors for release. The joust became the tournament's signature event: two armored riders charging each other with lances along a wooden barrier called the tilt. The word tilt itself became a synonym for joust.

The sport grew more elaborate and more dangerous. Henry II of France died jousting in 1559 when a lance splinter pierced his eye. That death effectively ended competitive jousting among European royalty. By the seventeenth century, the joust had been replaced by dressage and the carousel — the word carousel originally described a mounted combat exercise, not a children's ride.

English preserved the word in the phrase 'tilting at windmills,' from Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605). The expression means to fight imaginary enemies. The joust, which was once the most physically real form of combat in Europe, became a metaphor for futile fantasy. A word that meant 'to approach' became a word for combat, then a word for delusion.