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/, [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔːl], [ˈfʊʔtʰbɔːl], [ˈfʊʔbɔːl]
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtbɔl/, [ˈfʊʔtbɔɫ], [ˈfʊʔt̚bɔɫ]
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈfʊtbɑl/, [ˈfʷʊʔt̚bɑɫ]
• (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. (countable) The ball used in any game called "football".

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

   The player kicked the football.

   • 2015 January 23, Ralph Ellis, “NFL says it’s looking into why footballs were deflated at Patriots game”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     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.

   • 2020 February 24, Jack Guy, “UK football authorities ban children from heading footballs in training”, in CNN‎^[3]:

     “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.

3. (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.

   • 2020 February 24, Jack Guy, “UK football authorities ban children from heading footballs in training”, in CNN‎^[4]:

     “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.”

4. (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.

   • 2015 January 23, Ralph Ellis, “NFL says it’s looking into why footballs were deflated at Patriots game”, in CNN‎^[5]:

     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.

5. (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.

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

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

   • 2017 May 29, “Zak Jones fined for off-the-ball hit, escapes MRP suspension”, in Fox Footy‎^[6], retrieved 25 July 2025:

     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.

7. (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.
8. (Australia, New Zealand) Any form of rugby.
   • 2022, Joe Brumm, “The Decider”, in Bluey, spoken by Chucky:

     There's another game of football and there's a gold team and Mum and Dad are both on it!

   1. (chiefly New South Wales, Queensland, uncountable) rugby league.

      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:football

   2. (other parts of, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, uncountable) rugby union.
9. (uncountable) Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
   • 2014 May 10, Novy Kapadia, The Football Fanatic’s Essential Guide Part 1: Origins to 1974, Hachette UK, →ISBN, page 15:

     Both teams played open, attacking football and in the first thirty minutes, the referee barely blew his whistle.

   • 2024 September 24, Xavier Fowler, Football War: The VFA and VFL's Battle for Supremacy 1930-1949, Melbourne Univ. Publishing, →ISBN:

     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.

10. (figuratively, countable) An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner

    That budget item became a political football.

11. (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 [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 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

   Synonym: amerikansk fotboll

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