Football
nounA team sport played by kicking or carrying a ball toward a goal, the specific game varying by country.
How to spell football
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce football
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does football mean?
- nounA team sport played by kicking or carrying a ball toward a goal, the specific game varying by country.
- nounThe inflated ball used to play the sport of football.
Football in a sentence
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He played football for the local club every weekend.
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She kicked the football over the garden fence.
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The children booked a five-a-side football pitch after school.
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The new leather football needed a quick pump of air before the match.
Where does football come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Football is a transparent compound of two very old native English words, 'foot' and 'ball', and so it sits squarely in the Germanic layer of the language. 'Foot' descends from Old English 'fot', a word shared across the Germanic family for the lower limb, while 'ball' comes from a Germanic root for a round object, reinforced in Middle English by the Old Norse 'bollr'. The compound is recorded from the 1400s, originally describing the rough, crowd-based ball games played on foot through town streets, in pointed contrast to the games of mounted nobles. Over the centuries the name attached itself to several codified sports, which is why it now means association football (soccer) in Britain but the gridiron game in the United States. Because both parts are short, familiar words, the only spelling point worth noting is the doubled 'l' that 'ball' brings to the join.
How the word is built
- foot (the body part / a measure)
- ball (round object)
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