sport

   This word was applied to young men in general, regardless of their sporting interests, at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in the USA. It then became possible to use the term to address a man, either one well-known to the speaker or a stranger.

   ‘Sport’ occurs in some of the O.Henry short stories, and in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust an American woman says to a man: ‘Come on, sport - bottoms up’ as she attempts to make him drink. In Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, the hero is in his late forties and at one point has ‘to endure the patronage of the young soda-clerks’. We are told that ‘they called him “Old Georgie” and shouted, “Come on, now, sport; shake a leg.”’

   In modern times the use of ‘sport’ is especially associated with Australia, where the vocative is frequently used, but ‘sport’ or ‘old sport’ may still be heard in other parts of the English-speaking world.

   Its continued use in the USA, for instance, is demonstrated in Rabbit Redux, by John Updike, where it is used by a man to a male acquaintance. In The River, by Steven Bauer, it is used by an American man to a young girl, the daughter of an old friend. In O.Henry’s short story Sisters of the Colden Circle, a detective says to a suspected criminal: ‘Come on, old sport,’ but he says this ‘pleasantly’.