football
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈfʊtbɔːl/
ipa: [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔːl]
ipa: [ˈfʊʔtʰbɔːl]
ipa: [ˈfʊʔbɔːl]
ipa: /ˈfʊtbɔl/
ipa: [ˈfʊʔtbɔɫ]
ipa: [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔɫ]
ipa: /ˈfʊtbɑl/
ipa: [ˈfʷʊʔt̚bɑɫ]
ipa: /ˈfʊtboːl/
ipa: /fʉtbɔl/
note: Indic
ipa: /fʊʈ̬bɔl/
note: father-bother merger
ipa: /fʊʈ̬bɑl/
Forms: form: footballs
form: foot-ball
form: foot ball
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.
Senses: examples: text: Roman and medieval football matches were more violent than any modern type of football.
glosses: A sport played on foot in which teams attempt to get a ball into a goal or zone defended by the other team.
examples: text: The player kicked the football.
text: The league said the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots used footballs that didn’t meet league specifications in the first half of the AFC championship game last Sunday.
ref: 2015 January 23, Ralph Ellis, “NFL says it’s looking into why footballs were deflated at Patriots game”, in CNN:
text: “The coroner and the pathologist described how badly damaged my dad’s brain was,” his daughter Dawn told CNN in 2019. “He found that there was considerable evidence of trauma to the brain which he said was similar to the brain of the boxer. And he said that the main candidate for the trauma was heading the footballs.
ref: 2020 February 24, Jack Guy, “UK football authorities ban children from heading footballs in training”, in CNN:
glosses: The ball used in any game called "football".
examples: text: Each team scored three goals when they played football.
text: “Our research has shown that heading is rare in youth football matches, so this guidance is a responsible development to our grassroots coaching without impacting the enjoyment that children of all ages take from playing the game.”
ref: 2020 February 24, Jack Guy, “UK football authorities ban children from heading footballs in training”, in CNN:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: Each team scored two touchdowns when they played football.
text: According to Newsday, he took the ball to his team’s equipment staff, which then informed head coach Chuck Pagano, who told general manager Ryan Grigson, who told NFL director of football operations Mike Kensil, who told the officials on the field.
ref: 2015 January 23, Ralph Ellis, “NFL says it’s looking into why footballs were deflated at Patriots game”, in CNN:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: They played football in the snow.
glosses: 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.
examples: text: The weekend after AFL football chief Simon Lethlean made it clear players who jumper punched or punched opponents in the stomach would most likely be suspended, Jones was charged with striking Hawthorn’s Luke Breust.
ref: 2017 May 29, “Zak Jones fined for off-the-ball hit, escapes MRP suspension”, in Fox Footy, retrieved 25 Jul 2025:
qualifier: Victoria; Northern Territory; Victoria; Northern Territory
glosses: Australian rules football.
glosses: 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.
examples: text: There's another game of football and there's a gold team and Mum and Dad are both on it!
ref: 2022, Joe Brumm, “The Decider”, in Bluey, spoken by Chucky:
glosses: Any form of rugby.
glosses: Any form of rugby.
rugby league.
glosses: Any form of rugby.
rugby union.
qualifier: other parts of
examples: text: Both teams played open, attacking football and in the first thirty minutes, the referee barely blew his whistle.
ref: 2014 May 10, Novy Kapadia, The Football Fanatic’s Essential Guide Part 1: Origins to 1974, Hachette UK, →ISBN, page 15:
text: Sloppy football continued after the first break, as the more composed Brunswick controlled the play by relying on the throw-pass: forty times to Williamstown's twenty-eight.
ref: 2024 September 24, Xavier Fowler, Football War: The VFA and VFL's Battle for Supremacy 1930-1949, Melbourne Univ. Publishing, →ISBN:
glosses: Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
examples: text: That budget item became a political football.
glosses: An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1994, Herbert L. Abrams, The President Has Been Shot: Confusion, Disability, and the 25th Amendment, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 126:
text: 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.
ref: 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 155:
topics: government
military
politics
war
synonyms: nuclear football
atomic football
black box
black bag
coordinate_terms: Cheget
glosses: The leather briefcase containing classified nuclear war plans which is always near the US President.
Synonyms: word: association football
word: soccer
word: soccer football
word: football
word: footy
word: footie
word: footer
word: wogball
word: American football
word: gridiron
word: gridiron football
word: Canadian football
word: Aussie rules
word: VFL
word: AFL
word: league
word: ball
word: pill
word: soccer ball
topics: soccer
ball-games
games
sports
hobbies
lifestyle
word: pigskin
topics: American-football
football
ball-games
games
sports
hobbies
lifestyle
word: rugby ball
topics: rugby
ball-games
games
sports
hobbies
lifestyle
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
pull the football
route one football
soccer football
take one's football and go home
tea-sodden football hooligan
total football
Yankee football
Related terms: english: itself a calque of English: football
translation: itself a calque of English: football
alt: from German: Fußball (Fussball)
word: foosball