volée

Volée comes from French voler (to fly), from Latin volare. A volée was a flight — of birds, of arrows, of anything that moves through the air in a group. In medieval warfare, archers loosed volleys: coordinated releases of arrows that filled the sky. The English longbowmen at Crécy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415 fired volleys that darkened the air. The word was military before it was sporting.

English borrowed 'volley' in the sixteenth century. Military usage dominated for two centuries: volleys of musket fire, volleys of cannon shot. The key concept was simultaneity — many projectiles released at once, creating a wall of fire. The volley fire technique, where ranks of soldiers fired in sequence while others reloaded, was the standard infantry tactic from the 1600s to the mid-1800s.

Tennis adopted the word for a shot hit before the ball bounces — a ball played 'on the fly.' The connection is direct: a volley in tennis is a ball still in flight, still in its volée, not yet grounded. Football (soccer) borrowed it the same way — a volley is a kick taken while the ball is in the air. Volleyball, invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, was named for the act of volleying the ball back and forth without letting it bounce.

The word also means a burst of words — a volley of insults, a volley of questions. This follows the military metaphor: rapid-fire verbal attacks, too many to respond to individually. The flight that started with French birds passed through medieval arrows, Napoleonic muskets, tennis courts, and football pitches to arrive at a heated conversation.