different between niggerball vs football

English

Etymology

nigger +? ball

Noun

niggerball (countable and uncountable, plural niggerballs)

1. (South Africa, dated, countable) A large black gobstopper.
   • 1972, Contrast, Volume 8, South African Literary Journal

     Nigger-balls are the best sweets. You get four for a penny. When the black is sucked off you get pink and blue and blue-green, but you can't bite them until you've sucked them small or you'll chip your teeth.

   • 1979, Financial Mail

     That the words of Jeremy Taylor's Ag Pleez, Deddy have been changed to suit the times? No longer " … how we miss niggerballs and licorice … " but " … how we miss bullseyes and … " Ag pleez, Jeremy.
2. (uncountable, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) The sport of basketball.
   • 2002, "Lieberal Death", Your TV viewing for This Evening (on newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling)

     It's easy to see how Amerika's so easily turning into a police state, give the unwashed masses their television and some niggerball and they'll ignore the fact that they're slaves.

   • 2004, H. A. Covington, A Distant Thunder

     […] two-hundred dollar tennis shoes named after some niggerball player […]

Usage notes

• Because of the term's offensive connotations, the sweets were renamed in the 1980s to blackballs.

See also

• jawbreaker

English

Alternative forms

• foot-ball, foot ball (dated)

Etymology

From Middle English footbal, foteball, equivalent to foot +? ball, which may refer to the act of kicking a ball with the feet. The name for the briefcase is a play on “dropkick”, the code name of an early version of the nuclear war plan.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?f?tb?l/
  • IPA^(key): [?f??tb??], [?f??t?b??]
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?f?tb??l/
  • IPA^(key): [?f??t?b??l], [?f??t?b??l], [?f??b??l]
• (Canada) IPA^(key): /?f?tb?l/
  • IPA^(key): [f???t?b??]

Noun

football (countable and uncountable, plural footballs)

1. (general) A sport played on foot in which teams attempt to get a ball into a goal or zone defended by the other team.

2. (Britain, uncountable) Association football: a game in which two teams each contend to get a round ball into the other team's goal primarily by kicking the ball. Known as soccer in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

3. (US, uncountable) American football: a game played on a field of 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

4. (Canada, uncountable) Canadian football: a game played on a played on a field of 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

5. (Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, 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

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

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.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• foosball

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ?????? (futtob?ru)
• ? Korean: ?? (putbol)
• ? Maltese: futbol
• ? Russian: ??????? (futból) (see there for further descendants)
• ? Spanish: fútbol
• ? Portuguese: futebol
• ? Thai: ?????? (fút-b?n)

Translations

Verb

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 […]

See also

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

Further reading

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

References

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

French

Etymology

A borrowing from English football.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fut.bol/, /fut.bal/

Noun

football m (plural footballs)

1. association football, soccer
2. (Canada) Canadian football
3. (Louisiana) American football

Synonyms

• (soccer): foot (colloquial)
• (soccer): soccer (Quebec)
• (soccer): pelote au pied (Louisiana)
• (American football): football américain
• (Canadian football): football canadien

Further reading

• “football” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Interlingua

Etymology

From English.

Noun

football (uncountable)

1. football (soccer)

Middle English

Noun

football

1. Alternative form of foteball

Portuguese

Noun

football m (uncountable)

1. Dated spelling of futebol.