My eleven year old son’s soccer team has scrimmages each week in practice. On the way home this week, he told me how much he enjoys ‘skirmishing.’

“Did you say ‘scrimmage,’?” I asked. “Or skirmish?”

“Skirmish,” he replied. “Skirmishes are so much fun.”

I found this so funny, he knows about skirmishes because we play lots of tabletop games, some of the wargaming variety, that include skirmishes. I explained the word is ‘scrimmage,’ but since they sound so similar, it got me to wondering, so I had to check the glorious, trusty old OED. I had no idea that the word scrimmage seems to have its origin in the word skirmish, which was itself borrowed from the French escarmouche. It makes perfect sense that skirmish, which deals with warfare, would also be used in sports, where war metaphors abound. The kids are indeed skirmishing. I mean, scrimmaging. Anyway, as usual, my son is correct and knows more than dad, and has taught me something.

You can check out the etymology here: “skirmish, n., Etymology”. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8783343266

I’ve found that since my children began playing sports, I care less and less about the pros and am mostly interested in how much fun the children are having, what they are learning, and what friendships they form as they play. It’s for the best, anyway, since all the pro teams I like are terrible. Somehow we have the biggest market in the world for sports but all the local teams are not good.

Youth sports are much more fun anyway, what with all those skirmishes.