Playing sport and watching it

Near the end of this list is a word English lent to French and would now struggle to read back: l’outsider. The French sense is narrow, and it comes from the racecourse. L’outsider is the competitor who is not the favourite but whose win is perfectly possible — the second name on the card, the one a knowing punter backs. So l’outsider a tenu jusqu’au bout carries expectation inside it, and la victoire de l’outsider is a surprise rather than a miracle. English puts the word to two other uses. The first is social: an « outsider » is somebody outside the group, and that sense carries no odds at all. The second is the racing one, and it drifted the opposite way — « a rank outsider » is a runner nobody fancies, quoted at long odds. That drift is what makes the false friend expensive. A match report rendered as « the outsider held on » tells an English reader that a no-hoper very nearly won, when the French said the serious challenger did. « Dark horse » is the honest match.