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In search of a particular quotation, I was surprised to learn that Ten Pin Bowling got it name as evasion in the face of Puritan proscription of Nine Pin…! http://www.bartleby.com/185/19.html
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>I was surprised to learn that Ten Pin Bowling got it name as evasion in the face of Puritan proscription of Nine Pin…!
As a kid, I remember my Dad having a huge stack of "Classics Illustrated" comics. The one that had both "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle" stuck with me precisley because the old Dutch guys were playing nine-pins. I remember thinking at the time, (orientating myself to use words favoured by our Louahvul ayleur) "There ain't no such game".
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"There ain't no such game".
I realize it's not normally in my nature to correct faulty grammar in others, but that should be "They ain't no such a game".
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Well, I guess I has to be thankifying you for correctating my erroneousity, Faldage.
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erroneousityNot to join the nitpick gang, sjmaxq, but shouldn't that be erroneosity (generous/generosity)? 
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Heh. Maybe not in Zild, Nancy. They have a different pronounciation there.
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[dragging thread back on topic e] But first, a side note to nancyk--you read my mind, girlfriend! ;-) What a great link! (Though I must say, I found a couple of typos  .) Here's something *I never knew: The word soccer is derived from association; the rules of the game were established by the London Football Association. Soccer is one of the relatively few English experiments in portmanteau words. I can't resist putting something that reminded me of an ongoing argument with a Zildish friend: (an Englishman) has no verb in such wide practise as to fix. In his speech it means only to make fast or to determine. In American it may mean to repair, as in “the plumber fixed the pipe”; to dress, as in “Mary fixed her hair”; to prepare, as in “the cook is fixing the gravy”; to bribe, as in “the judge was fixed”; to settle, as in “the quarrel was fixed up”; to heal, as in “the doctor fixed his boil”; to finish, as in “Murphy fixed Sweeney in the third round”; to be well-to-do, as in “John is well-fixed”; to arrange, as in “I fixed up the quarrel”; to be drunk, as in “the whiskey fixed him”; to punish, as in “I’ll fix him”; and to correct, as in “he fixed my bad Latin.” Moreover, it is used in all its English senses. An Englishman never goes to a dentist to have his teeth fixed. He does not fix the fire; he makes it up, or mends it. He is never well-fixed, either in money or by liquor. There--fixed your wagon, I reckon! P.S.--"pronounciation": <grin>
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They have a different pronounciation there.Plus all those extra "u"s: hono[u]r, colo[u]r, glamo[u]r, erroneo[u]sity, etc.  
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They're not "extra" we just chose not to let one egotistical old man set up himself as arbiter of our orthography, chopping out letters he didn't like purely to make a poltical point.
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Residing as I do in HLM's home town (I once nearly bought a house on the square where he lived), I have to accord due deference to the Sage. However in his day, and still in this barbarous and illiterate age, 'ten pins' had, and has, a particular meaning in Baltimore and in a few other spots around the U.S. where the sport of duckpins is as popular, if not more popular then tenpins. 'Tenpins' is used to refer to one form of bowling as distinguished from 'duckpins'.
Believed to have been introduced by German immigrants (so HLM certainly would have known about this), duckpins is a variation on the standard tenpins game. Duckpins is played with ten pins on an alley of the same dimensions as a tenpin alley. The pins are about 2/3 as tall as tenpins and more squat in shape; hence they are more stable and more difficult to knock down. The ball used in duckpins is about the size of a large grapefruit (I forget the exact size) and has no holes, but is made of the same material as the large tenpin ball and is thus quite heavy for its size. It's held in the palm of the hand and thrown while gripped with the fingers. Lastly, in duckpins, you get to roll your ball three times in a frame if you don't score a strike on the first roll or a spare on the second.
Duckpins is much more difficult than tenpins. A perfect 300 score is almost unheard of; in fact, a score over 250 is outstanding. The size of the ball and the pins causes far fewer strikes than in tenpins and the player is often left for his second roll 2 or 3 pins which will be difficult to get down in order to achieve a spare. In fact, playing "splits" for a spare is a most important part of duckpins.
/digression
I guess HLM was only interested in the difference between tenpins and ninepins and hence didn't refer to duckpins.
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