It started out as Mintonette
In 1895, William G. Morgan, a physical education teacher at a Young Men's Christian Association gym in Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented a game for businessmen who found basketball too rough. He borrowed a tennis NET, raised it to about two metres, and called the game Mintonette. A basketball was too heavy and its inner rubber bladder too light, so a company made a new ball especially for the game.
At a demonstration the following year, a watcher pointed out that the players were really volleying the ball back and forth over the net, and the name volleyball stuck. Morgan's first rules allowed any number of players and nine innings, like baseball.
Bump, set, spike
Each team may touch the ball three times before it goes back over. The usual pattern is a BUMP to control it, a SET to float it up near the net, and a SPIKE to smash it down. Players in the Philippines are often credited with developing the set-and-spike attack in the 1910s. A spike that wins the point is a KILL, and a SERVE nobody can return is an ACE.
For most of the sport's history, only the serving team could score. Winning a RALLY as the receiving team earned a SIDEOUT, which won the serve back but no point, so matches could drag on for hours. Since 1999 international volleyball has used rally scoring, where every rally scores a point and sets go to 25. When a team wins the serve back, its players move round one place in the ROTATION.
The player in a different shirt
The LIBERO, Italian for free, was added to the indoor game in 1998. The libero is a defensive specialist who wears a different-coloured shirt and can swap in and out without the usual limits, but is not allowed to attack the ball from above the top of the net. The SETTER runs the attack, a bit like a quarterback, and passes to each SPIKER.
Volleyball has plenty of odd names. A PANCAKE is a dig made by sliding a flat hand along the floor so the ball bounces off the back of it. A JOUST is when two players push the ball against each other above the net at the same moment. A FLOATER is a serve with no spin, which wobbles unpredictably in the air. The ANTENNA rods mark the edges of the COURT above the net, and PEPPER is a warm-up in which two players pass, set and hit to each other.
From the sand to the Olympics
BEACH volleyball began on the beaches of Santa Monica in California in the 1920s. It is played in pairs on a smaller court, sixteen metres by eight, with no substitutes. Indoor volleyball joined the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964, and beach volleyball followed in Atlanta in 1996.
Beach players cannot hide behind teammates, so they use hand signals behind the back before each serve to tell their partner which way they plan to block. The weather matters too: players choose which way to serve with the wind and sun in mind, and switch ends every seven points in the first two sets so nobody keeps the advantage.
Every point, indoors or on the sand, can include a diving DIG that keeps the ball off the floor and a leap to BLOCK at the net.