football

• foot-ball, foot ball (dated)

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.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtbɔːl/, , ,
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtbɔl/, ,
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtbɑl/,
• (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtboːl/

  • Audio (General Australian):

    (file)

• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA^(key): /fʉtbɔl/
• Hyphenation: foot‧ball

football (countable and uncountable, plural footballs)

1. 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.

2. (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.

3. (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.

4. (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.

5. (Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, southern New South Wales, uncountable) Australian rules football.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

6. (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.
7. (Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, uncountable) rugby league.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

8. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, uncountable) rugby union.
9. (countable) The ball used in any game called "football".

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

   The player kicked the football.

10. (uncountable) Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
11. (figuratively, countable) An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner

    That budget item became a political football.

12. (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.

• 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.

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

football (third-person singular simple present footballs, present participle footballing, simple past and past participle footballed)

1. (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 […]

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

• “football”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

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

Borrowed from English football.

• IPA^(key): /fut.bol/, /fut.bal/

• Audio:

  (file)

football m (plural footballs)

1. association football, soccer

   Synonyms: foot, (Louisiana) pelote au pied, (North America) soccer

2. (Canada) Canadian football

   Synonym: football canadien

3. (US) American football

   Synonym: football américain

• “football”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

From English football.

football (uncountable)

1. football (UK), soccer (US, Canada)

football

1. Alternative form of fotbal

football m (uncountable)

1. Alternative spelling of futebol

From English football, clipping of English American football,.

football c

1. American football

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

• Amerikansk fotboll