full-court

The compound adjective 'full-court' is a modern formation specific to sports terminology, primarily basketball. It literally combines 'full,' with its ancient Germanic sense of completeness, and 'court,' which evolved from the Latin cohors (an enclosed space) through Old French into its modern sporting sense. The term's logic is transparent: it describes an action or strategy that utilizes the entire defined playing area. This literal spatial meaning was then extended metaphorically to describe any endeavor employing maximum available effort or resources, akin to a team applying pressure across the whole court.

Structure: full (complete) + court (enclosed area for games) - full: From Old English full, meaning "complete, entire." It functions as an adjective modifying the noun 'court' to indicate comprehensiveness. - court: From Old French cort, ultimately from Latin cohors ("enclosed yard, retinue"). It functions as the core noun denoting the defined playing area.