football

🏈

Meaning

1. A sport played on foot in which teams attempt to get a ball into a goal or zone defended by the other team.
2. Association football, also called soccer: a game in which two teams each contend to get a round ball into the other team's goal primarily by kicking the ball.
3. American football: a game played on a field 100 yards long and 53 1/3 yards wide in which two teams of 11 players attempt to get an ovoid ball to the end of each other's territory.
4. Canadian football: a game played on a field 110 yards long and 65 yards wide in which two teams of 12 players attempt to get an ovoid ball to the end of each other's territory.
5. Australian rules football.
6. Gaelic football: a field game played with similar rules to hurling, but using hands and feet rather than a stick, and a ball, similar to, yet smaller than a soccer ball.
7. rugby league.
8. rugby union.
9. The ball used in any game called "football".
10. Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
11. An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner
12. (slang) The leather briefcase containing classified nuclear war plans which is always near the US President.

Frequency

Hyphenated as

foot‧ball

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈfʊtbɔːl/

Etymology

From Middle English fotbal, footbal, equivalent to foot + ball, which may refer to the act of kicking a ball with the feet or to the fact the game was played on foot (as opposed to on horseback or with players in fixed positions). The name for the briefcase is a play on “dropkick”, the code name of an early version of the nuclear war plan.