# football
## English
### Alternative forms

* foot-ball, foot ball (dated)

### 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.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈfʊtbɔːl/, [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔːl], [ˈfʊʔtʰbɔːl], [ˈfʊʔbɔːl]
* (General American) IPA: /ˈfʊtbɔl/, [ˈfʊʔtbɔɫ], [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔɫ]
* (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA: /ˈfʊtbɑl/, [ˈfʷʊʔt̚bɑɫ]
* (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈfʊtboːl/
** Audio (General Australian):(file)
* (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA: /fʉtbɔl/
* Hyphenation: foot‧ball

### Noun

football (countable and uncountable, plural footballs)
* A sport played on foot in which teams attempt to get a ball into a goal or zone defended by the other team.
    Roman and medieval football matches were more violent than any modern type of football.
* (UK, Africa, Caribbean, South Asia, uncountable) 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.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
    Each team scored three goals when they played football.
* (US, uncountable) 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.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
    Each team scored two touchdowns when they played football.
* (Canada, uncountable) 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.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
    They played football in the snow.
* (Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, southern New South Wales, uncountable) Australian rules football.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
* (Ireland, uncountable) 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.
* (Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, uncountable) rugby league.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
* (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, uncountable) rugby union.
* (countable) The ball used in any game called "football".
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football
    The player kicked the football.
* (uncountable) Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
* (figuratively, countable) An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner
    That budget item became a political football.
* (US military slang, countable) The leather briefcase containing classified nuclear war plans which is always near the US President.
    Synonyms: nuclear football, atomic football, black box, black bag
    Coordinate term: Cheget
** 1994, Herbert L. Abrams, The President Has Been Shot: Confusion, Disability, and the 25th Amendment, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 126:The aide rides, along with the president's physician, in the “control car,” third in line in the motorcade. He is responsible for the football (or “black box” or “black bag”), a briefcase containing the codes and targeting information the president would require to order or authorize a nuclear attack.
** 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 155:After the lunch broke, we walked to the Trump-Putin press conference, which started about 6 p.m. As Kelly observed to me at some point, there were now two military aides in the room, each carrying his country's nuclear football.

#### Usage notes

* The word football usually refers to the most popular football code in that country or region. In some places, multiple sports can be called football (for example, in Australia it may refer to soccer, Australian rules football, rugby union or rugby league depending on the area and speaker) and context can be required to tell to which sport it refers. In countries where no form of football is dominant, and among English as a second language speakers in general, football usually refers to association football (soccer) by default.

#### Hyponyms

* American football
* arena football
* association football
* Australian rules football
* Barbarian football
* blow football
* Canadian flag football
* Canadian football
* crab football
* five-a-side football
* flag football
* Gaelic football
* gridiron football
* Northern Union football
* political football
* roller football
* rugby football
* six-man football
* table football
* tackle football
* touch football

#### Derived terms

* Angeball
* antifootball
* Australian football
* fantasy football
* feetsball
* football bar
* football club
* footballene
* footballer
* footballese
* football field
* footballfish
* football fruit
* football hooligan
* football hooliganism
* footballing
* footballish
* footballist
* footballistic
* footballization
* football match
* football minute
* football pie
* football pitch
* football player
* football pool
* football tennis
* footbrawl
* footer
* footy
* hoofball
* international football
* international rules football
* monkey humping a football
* monkeys humping a football
* nonfootball
* North American football
* route one football
* soccer football
* take one's football and go home
* tea-sodden football hooligan
* total football
* Yankee football

#### Related terms

* foosball (from German: Fußball (Fussball), itself a calque of English: football)

#### Descendants

* ⇒ Azerbaijani: futbol
* → Bengali: ফুটবল (phuṭbol) (transliteration)
* → Bulgarian: фу́тбол (fútbol)
* → Czech: fotbal
* → Dutch: voetbal (calque)
** → Caribbean Hindustani: futbál khele
* → French: football
* → Georgian: ფეხბურთი (pexburti) (calque)
* → German: Football
* → German: Fußball, Fussball (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, sometimes Luxembourg, South Tyrol) (calque)
** → English: foosball
** ⇒? Luxembourgish: Foussball
* → Greek: ποδόσφαιρο (podósfairo) (calque)
* → Hebrew: כדורגל (calque)
* → Hindustani:
    Hindi: फ़ुटबॉल (fuṭbŏl)
* → Hungarian: futball
* → Japanese: フットボール (futtobōru)
* → Korean: 풋볼 (putbol)
* → Latvian: futbols
* → Latvian: kājbumba (calque)
* → Lithuanian: fùtbolas
* → Macedonian: фу́дбал (fúdbal)
* → Maltese: futbol
* → Norwegian Nynorsk: fotball (calque)
* → Ottoman Turkish: فوتبول
** Turkish: futbol
* → Polish: futbol
* → Polish: piłka nożna (calque)
* → Portuguese: futebol
* → Romanian: fotbal
* → Russian: футбо́л (futból)
** → Armenian: ֆուտբոլ (futbol)
** → Kazakh: футбол (futbol)
* ⇒ Serbo-Croatian:
** Cyrillic script: фу̏дба̄л
** Latin script: fȕdbāl
* → Spanish: balompié (calque)
* → Spanish: fútbol, futbol (Mexico), fúbol
** → Guaraní: húvol
** →? Tagalog: putbol
* → Swedish: fotboll (calque)
** ⇒ Finnish: futis
* → Thai: ฟุตบอล (fút-bɔn)
* ⇒ Tok Pisin: soka
* ⇒ Ukrainian: футбо́л (futból)

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Verb

football (third-person singular simple present footballs, present participle footballing, simple past and past participle footballed)
* (intransitive, rare) To play football.
** 1969, Alec Hugh Chisholm, The Joy of the Earth, page 358:It was an announcement of the outbreak of what is now termed World War I. Some of us lads were footballing when we heard the news. It left us bewildered.
** 2019, David Randall, Suburbia: A Far from Ordinary Place:You walked up our road, passed the elms that bordered our park until Dutch disease killed them in the early 1970s, diagonally crossed its field where we footballed, turned right at the drinking fountain and cattle trough […]

### See also

* Category:en:Football (soccer) for a list of terms used in football/soccer.

### References

* ↑ Associated Press (2005 May 5) “Military aides still carry the president's nuclear 'football'”, in USA Today‎, archived from the original on 2015-02-26: “It got its nickname because an early version of the nuclear war plan — the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operational Plan — was code-named "dropkick."”
* “football”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

### Further reading

* football on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* football (word) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* American football on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* nuclear football on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

## French
### Etymology

Borrowed from English football.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /fut.bol/, /fut.bal/
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

football m (plural footballs)
* association football, soccer
    Synonyms: foot, (Louisiana) pelote au pied, (North America) soccer
* (Canada) Canadian football
    Synonym: football canadien
* (US) American football
    Synonym: football américain

#### Hyponyms

* football américain
* football association
* football australien
* football canadien
* football de règles internationales
* football gaélique
* football international
* football nord-américain
* football touch

### Further reading

* “football”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

## Interlingua
### Etymology

From English football.

### Noun

football (uncountable)
* football (UK), soccer (US, Canada)

## Middle English
### Noun

football
* Alternative form of fotbal

## Portuguese
### Pronunciation

* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈfu.t͡ʃi.bow/ [ˈfu.t͡ʃi.boʊ̯], /ˈfut͡ʃ.bow/ [ˈfut͡ʃ.boʊ̯]
* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈfu.t͡ʃi.bow/ [ˈfu.t͡ʃi.boʊ̯], /ˈfut͡ʃ.bow/ [ˈfut͡ʃ.boʊ̯]
** (Southern Brazil) IPA: /ˈfut͡ʃ.bow/ [ˈfut͡ʃ.boʊ̯], /ˈfu.t͡ʃi.bow/ [ˈfu.t͡ʃi.boʊ̯]
* (Portugal) IPA: /ˈfu.tbol/ [ˈfu.tβoɫ], /ˈfu.tbɔl/ [ˈfu.tβɔɫ]

### Noun

football m (uncountable)
* Alternative spelling of futebol

## Swedish
### Etymology

From English football, clipping of English American football,.
football c
* American football

### Usage notes

Found primarily in subtitling of television and movies, due to its brevity, where fotboll could be interpreted as association football.

### Synonyms

* Amerikansk fotboll