Soccer

How to spell soccer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce soccer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does soccer mean?

1. nounA team game played by kicking a round ball into the opposing goal, known formally as association football.

Soccer in a sentence

• The children practise soccer on the field after school.

• He coaches a local soccer team every weekend.

Where does soccer come from?

Language of origin: Other

Soccer began in England in the 1880s as student slang. When the rules of the modern game were codified, the sport was officially called 'association football' to distinguish it from rugby football. Oxford undergraduates of the period loved to clip words and tack on an '-er' ending, a habit that also produced 'rugger' for rugby and 'brekker' for breakfast. They took the 'soc' from 'association', doubled the consonant for the right sound, and arrived at 'soccer'. The word later became the dominant name for the game in the United States and Canada, where 'football' refers to a different sport, while it gradually fell out of fashion in Britain; this is why the spelling, with its tricky double 'c', often gives writers pause.

How the word is built

• soc- (clipped from 'association', in 'association football')
• -er (Oxford '-er' slang suffix forming a casual noun)