Football

Football (pronounced foot-bawl)

(1) As Association Football (soccer), a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goal-nets at opposite ends of a field, points being scored by placing the ball in an opponent’s net.

(2) As American football, a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goals at opposite ends of a field having goal posts at each end, with points being scored either by carrying the ball across the opponent's goal line or kicking it over the crossbar between the opponent's goal posts.

(3) By association (sometimes officially and sometimes as an alternative or informal name), any of various games played with spherical or ellipsoid balls, based usually on two teams competing (variously) to kick, head, carry, or otherwise propel the ball in the direction of each other's territory, the mechanisms of scoring varying according to the rules of the code (Rugby Union, Rugby League, Canadian Football, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic Football etc).

(4) The inflated ball (of various sizes and either spherical or ellipsoid in shape and historically made of leather but now often synthetic) used in football, the Rugby codes etc.

(5) Any person, thing or abstraction treated roughly, tossed about or a problem or (in the phrase “political football”) an issue repeatedly passed from one group or person to another and treated as a pretext for argument (often to gain political advantage) instead of being resolved.

(6) In slang (originally in the US military but now widely used), a briefcase containing the codes and options the US president would use to launch a nuclear attack, carried by a military aide and kept available to the president at all times (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) (by convention with an initial capital).

(7) As a modifier, football club, football ground, football fanatic, football pitch, football hooligan, football fan, football match etc.

(8) In commercial use, something sold at a reduced or special price.

1350-1400: From the Middle English fut ball, fotbal & footbal, the construct being foot + ball, the name derived from the games which involved kicking the ball.  Foot was from the Middle English fut, fot, fote & foot, from the Old English fōt, from the Proto-West Germanic fōt, from the Proto-Germanic fōts, from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  Ball was from the Middle English bal, ball & balle, from the (unattested) Old English beall & bealla (round object, ball) or the Old Norse bǫllr (a ball), both from the Proto-Germanic balluz & ballô (ball), from the primitive Indo-European boln- (bubble), from the primitive Indo-European bel- (to blow, inflate, swell).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon ball, the Dutch bal, the Old High German bal & ballo (from which Modern German gained Ball (ball) & Ballen (bale)).  The related forms in Romance languages are borrowings from the Germanic.

Lindsay Lohan in “gridiron” gear, Life Size (2000).

Apparently in international use now less common than once (“NFL” now preferred), the term "gridiron" remains frequently used in the US describe American football including the NFL (National Football League).  The word refers to the marking originally painted on the field: two intersecting series of parallel lines running the length & breadth of the field which produced a cross-hatched effect recalling the gridirons used on stoves.  After the 1919-1920 season, the grid was replaced with yard lines still in use today but the name has stuck.  In the thirteenth century it was an instrument of torture on which victims chained before being burned by fire and in the same vein (though less gruesomely), in the 1500s it described a similar wrought grate on which meat and fish were broiled over hot coals.  In modern use, it's used of lattice-like structures (though not necessarily of iron) including in ship repair where grid irons are used as an open frame which supports vessels for examination, cleaning and repairs when out of the water and in the slang of live theatre, it's a raised framework from which lighting is suspended.  An interesting (though no longer permitted) use emerged in twentieth century land law in New Zealand where "to grid iron" was to purchase land with the boundaries drawn so remaining adjacent parcels were smaller than the minimum which could be registered in fee simple (freehold), thus preserving the buyers view and excluding the threat of undesirable neighbors.  Globally, the cultural and economic impacts of soccer have long been obvious.  Although Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949) thought England eventually would be remembered for her school of physics and lyric poets, the less romantic Sir Richard Turnbull (1909–1998; long serving UK colonial administrator) told Denis Healey (1917–2015; UK defence minister 1964-1970) that “…when the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression ‘fuck off’”.  

"Fuck off" has of course flourished in Australia and New Zealand and in some suburbs conversations without it being heard at least once are rare but soccer was different.  It was different in Australia because of Australian Football which, while occasionally called “Aussie Rules” has long been commonly known as football (or footie) so the round-ball game became soccer and the name Socceroo (the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roo)) was adopted as the official name for the national team.  In Japan, where the dominant influence on the language in the twentieth century was the US, the most common form is サッカー(sakkā, from soccer).  In the US, a hybrid (with a few unique innovations) of rugby and association football emerged and was soon more popular than either.  The early name was “gridiron football” but in the pragmatic American way, that quickly became simply “football” although curiously, “gridiron” has survived among many foreign audiences.  Realizing the linguistic batter was lost, the United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, in 1945 changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association before deciding the advantages of product differentiation should be pursued, deleting entirely any use of “football”.  The other great US contribution to the language was the “soccer mom”, an encapsulation of a particular (usually white), middle-class demographic describing (1) a woman who often drives her school-age children to sporting activities and (2) in a quasi-disparaging sense, a white, middle-class woman who obsessively talks of her children’s successes and achievements.  There are derivative terms such as soccer dad & ballet dad but they’ve never achieved the same cultural traction.

In Australia & New Zealand, “footy” is the common slang used in all of the four major codes.  Slang terms for footballs include moleskin, pill, peanut, pigskin, pillow & pineapple.  The names are an allusion to the shape and that so many start with the letter “p” is thought mere coincidence.  The figurative sense of “something idly kicked around, something subject to hard use and many vicissitudes” which is the ancestor of the “political football” was in use as early as the 1530s while the US military slang referencing the portable device with which a US president emerged in the 1960s.  Football (in the sense of soccer) is called “the world game”: and like the game, forms of the word have spread to many languages including the Arabic كرة القدم‎ (calque), the Czech fotbal, the Dutch: voetbal (calque), the German Fußball (Fussball) (calque), the Hebrew כדורגל‎ (calque), the Japanese フットボール (futtobōru), the Korean 풋볼 (putbol), the Maltese futbol, the Portuguese futebol, the Romanian fotbal, the Russian футбо́л (futból), the Spanish fútbol, the Thai ฟุตบอล (fút-bɔn) and the Turkish futbol.  Football is a noun & verb, footballer & footballization are nouns, footballing is a verb & adjective and footballed is a verb; the noun plural is footballs.

The Nuclear Football

US Navy Commander walking across the White House lawn, carrying the “Football” onto Marine One (the presidential helicopter).

The “Football” (also as nuclear football, atomic football, black box or black bag) is a briefcase (reputedly made of a reinforced material with a black leather skin) which a military aide to the US president carries so at all times when the commander-in-chief is remote from designated command centres (such as the White House Situation Room), orders to the military can be issued including the command to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons.  The Football contains lists of the codes needed to transmit the launch order and the essential technical documentation required to determine the form a nuclear attack should assume.  Apparently, there’s also a check-list of the domestic measures immediately to be executed in the event of an attack including the imposition of martial law and the closing of US airspace to civilian aviation.  This was an outgrowth of the “SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) Execution Handbook which codified in one publication all essential information needed in the circumstances, something developed during the administration of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) but in the way of things familiar to those acquainted with bureaucratic inertia, the physical size (and thus the weight) of the contents grew and there are reports the package now weights in excess of 20 kg (45 lb).  Of course, everything could be contained on a single USB pen-drive (and the Football presumably includes a number of these) but because it’s something of a doomsday device, everything needs to be accessible in a WCS (worst case scenario) in which electronic devices are for whatever reason unable to be used.

Set of the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).  It’s presumably apocryphal but it’s said Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) remarked his only disappointment upon becoming president was that the White House Situation Room was more like something in which an insurance company might conduct seminars than the film’s dramatic War Room set.

The first known use of something recognizable as a “Football” was during the second administration (1957-1961) of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) although in those days it contained purely the vital information and none of the independent communications connectivity which apparently was added as early as 1977.  Quite when first it was called the Football isn’t known but the term was in use during the Kennedy years and all agree it was based on the idea of the football “being passed” as happens in the game, the link being that it’s carried 24/7/365 by an on-duty military officer.  There’s also the story that “Football” was a refinement (possibly a euphemistic one) of the earlier (and also unattributed) nickname “dropkick”.  In the game of football the dropkick can be used to transfer the ball to another player and it was used as a codename in the film Dr Strangelove, a dark comedy of nuclear destruction.  However whether art imitated life or it was the other way around isn’t known and Football anyway prevailed.

The arrival of the Football in Hiroshima in May 2023 with Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) who was in town for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting was noted on Japanese Social Media although it wasn’t the first time the Football had been in the city which was the target of the first nuclear attack, Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) visiting in 2016.  By the time President Obama stepped off the Air Force One, the Football enabled him to unleash within 30 minutes the equivalent of over 22,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs which, while rather less than in 1969 when the when the size of the US nuclear arsenal peaked, was still quite an increase on the two deliverable weapons available in August 1945.  The thermo-nuclear (fusion) devices in use since the 1950s were also a thousand-fold (and beyond) more powerful than the fission bombs deployed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki although interestingly, while for decades the Hiroshima bomb was a genuine one-off (using uranium rather than plutonium), analysts believe in recent years uranium has again become fashionable with recent adopters such as Pakistan and the DPRK (North Korea) building them because of the relative simplicity of construction.

Soccer

Soccer (pronounced sok-er)

(1) A form of 11-a-side football played between two teams, in which the spherical ball may be advanced by kicking or by bouncing it off any part of the body (excluding the arms and hands unless re-starting the game by throwing in the ball from the sideline), the object being to score points by putting the ball in the opponent’s goal-net. The special position of goalkeeper may, within certain positional limitations, use their arms and hands to catch, carry, throw, or stop the ball.

(2) In the slang of Australian Rules Football (AFL, the old VFL), to kick the football directly off the ground, without use of the hands.

1888: A coining in British English, a colloquial term for Association Football, the construct being (As)soc(iation football) + -er.  The other forms were socker (1885) & socca (1889), the first known instance of "soccer" noted in 1888, the word coming into general use between 1890-1895 and it evolved from slang to a standard noun.  Soccer is a noun & verb and soccered & soccering are verbs.  The special use as a verb happens in Australian Rules Football and describes a player kicking the football directly off the ground, without the use of the hands.

The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought usually to have been borrowed from Latin –ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.  Usually, the –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun and if added to a noun it usually denoted an occupation.  However, there was also the special case of the “slang –er”, which etymologists sometimes call the “Oxford –er” because of the association (though not the origin) of the practice with the university in the nineteenth century.  The slang –er was used as a suffix to make jocular or convenient formations from common or proper names and appears to first have been English schoolboy use in the 1860s before entering the vernacular via its introduction to Oxford University slang from Rugby School, the Oxford English Dictionary even identifying the first documented instance “at University College, in Michaelmas Term, 1875".  The first coining was probably rugger (the game of Rugby) and constructs on the same model include brekker (breakfast), fresher (freshman), leccer (lecture), footer (football), fiver (five-pound note) and tenner (ten-shilling note).  The practice continued in the twentieth century and some coinings endured in the plural such as preggers (pregnant), bonkers (behaving as if bonked on the head) and starkers (stark naked).  Given it was originally the work of schoolboys, some have expressed surprise they didn’t instead render a verbal shorthand of “Association Football” in a form using “ass” (although at Oxford it briefly was assoccer before quickly being truncated).

Football-type games have been documented for centuries and it seems likely something similar was probably played in prehistoric times on occasions when young people congregated but the point of Association Football was that in 1863 it codified a set of rules, allowing structured competitions to be formed.  Prior to that, clubs abd schools played many variations of the game and this caused difficulties when the young men met at university, finding no general agreement on the rules.  The University of Cambridge did create their own rule book but it was but one of many and it was this proliferation which lead to the formation of the association, the discussions eventually producing not only the rules of what would emerge as modern football (soccer) but also the schism which saw some schools and clubs go in another direction and play what became known first as rugby football and later simply rugby.  Later still, when it suffered its own schism and begat rugby league, the name “rugby union” emerged although “rugby” remains most common.

To most in the US, the word "football" means something different than in much of the world so it's not clear what Lindsay Lohan thought she was being invited to when Carolyn Radford (b 1982; Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mansfield Town Stags) extended the offer of a seat at a match.  It’s not known if Ms Lohan did manage to catch a game but the promise of her presence clearly inspired the players because the Stags, then languishing in the non-League (fifth level) division of the English football league system, in 2024 gained promotion to League One (the old third division).  

In most parts of the world, the game is known as football but in places where other forms of (closely or vaguely) similar ball sports had become popular and referred to either officially or casually as “football”, soccer was adopted as the preferred term for what was, at the elite level, a minority sport.  Thus in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Ireland the game came to be called soccer although, in New Zealand, beginning in the late twentieth century, “football” increasingly supplanted “soccer”, the assumption being that because the volume of overseas matches televised (with the native commentary) vastly exceeded that of local content, the word became accepted.  Additionally, because the rugby codes (historically rugby union and increasingly after the 1980s rugby league so dominated) and the common slang was “footie” rather than “football”, the latter in that sense never achieved the critical mass needed to entrench use.  Globally, the cultural and economic impacts of soccer have long been obvious.  Although Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949) thought England eventually would be remembered for her school of physics and lyric poets, the less romantic Sir Richard Turnbull (1909–1998; long serving UK colonial administrator) told Denis Healey (1917–2015; UK defence minister 1964-1970) that “…when the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression ‘fuck off’”.  

"Fuck off" has of course flourished in Australia and in some suburbs conversations without it being heard at least once are rare but soccer was different.  It was different in Australia because of Australian Football which, while occasionally called “Aussie Rules” has long been commonly known as football (or footie) so the round-ball game became soccer and the name Socceroo (the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roo)) was adopted as the official name for the national team.  In Japan, where the dominant influence on the language in the twentieth century was the US, the most common form is サッカー(sakkā, from soccer).  In the US, a hybrid (with a few unique innovations) of rugby and association football emerged and was soon more popular than either.  The early name was “gridiron football” but in the pragmatic American way, that quickly became simply “football” although curiously, “gridiron” has survived among many foreign audiences.  Realizing the linguistic batter was lost, the United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, in 1945 changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association before deciding the advantages of product differentiation should be pursued, deleting entirely any use of “football”.  The other great US contribution to the language was the “soccer mom”, an encapsulation of a particular (usually white), middle-class demographic describing (1) a woman who often drives her school-age children to sporting activities and (2) in a quasi-disparaging sense, a white, middle-class woman who obsessively talks of her children’s successes and achievements.  There are derivative terms such as soccer dad & ballet dad but they’ve never achieved the same cultural traction.

The well connected Sepp Blatter (b 1936; President of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 1998-2015).

(1) With Silvio Berlusconi (b 1936; thrice Italian prime minister 1994-2011).

(2) With Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001).

(3) With Elizabeth II; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022).

(4) With the FIFA World Cup trophy (which hasn’t actually been a cup since 1974).

(5) With Vladimir Putin (b 1952; Russian president or prime-minister since 1999).

(6) With Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1946; thrice Israeli prime-minister 1996-2022).

(7) With David Cameron (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016).

(8) With Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani (b 1988; chief of Qatar's 2022 World Cup Bid).

(9) With Nicolas Sarközy (b 1955, French president 2007-2012).

(10) With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; Turkish president or prime-minister since 2003).

(11) With Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022).

(12) With Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & Jun-Sep 2013).

Unlike some sports where the influence of technology or improvements in this and that are so significant it verges on impossible usefully to compare players from different eras, probably few would disagree that among sports administrators, Sepp Blatter has achieved some of the most extraordinary things.

In office as president of FIFA between 1998-2015, Blatter devoted much of his time (and FIFA’s money) to building his power base among football’s influential in Asia and Africa.  This attracted some comment from the football community in places like Europe and South America but it was in May 2015 he really made the headlines when a joint operation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Swiss investigators staged a raid on the Zürich hotel where FIFA were about to conduct their annual congress.  Seven FIFA executives were arrested and charged with racketeering & money laundering while a further seven officials and sports-marketing figures were indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for offenses reaching back more than two decades.  Shortly afterwards, the DoJ revealed four other executives and two companies had already pleaded guilty in the international probe, which involved the payment of some US$150 million in what were alleged to be bribes and kickbacks.  Despite it all, two days after the arrests, Blatter was re-elected president by nearly a two-thirds majority of the 209-member FIFA voting body.  Contrary to the president’s expectations, a public outcry ensued which in just a few days escalated so rapidly that Blatter called for a special session of the FIFA congress to be convened, vowing to resign once a successor had been elected.  In October 2015, following the announcements of further investigations of Blatter’s conduct, FIFA’s ethics committee suspended him from the organization for 90 days, appointing an acting president.

Two months later Blatter was found guilty of ethics violations and barred from football-related activities for eight years.  Some of the charges were pursuant to a US$2 million payment Blatter made in 2011 to Michel Platini (b 1955; president of Union des associations européennes de football (UEFA, the peak body controlling football in Europe) 2007-2015), the supporting documentation associated with the payment said to be about as extensive as that attached to the receipt in the petty-cash tin for a packet of biscuits.  Platini had long been assumed to be Blatter’s successor.  Blatter appealed the decision and in February 2016 FIFA’s appeals committee reduced the ban to six years, a ruling upheld by the Tribunal arbitral du sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)) in December.  Under new FIFA President Gianni Infantino (b 1970; FIFA president since 2016), further investigations were undertaken and in December 2020, FIFA filed a criminal complaint against Blatter relating to his role in the FIFA Museum project before, in March 2021, citing financial wrongdoing in the payment of huge “bonuses”, imposing a fine of just over US$1 million and extending his ban from football for a further six years, beginning as soon as the original ban expired in October 2022.  That was bad enough but his life appeared to be getting worse when, in November 2021, Swiss authorities brought to trial fraud charges associated with the falsification of documents relating to the mysterious payments to Platini.  Some eight months later, Blatter and Platini were cleared of all charges.  Sepp Blatter has achieved extraordinary things.

Snood

Snood (pronounced snood)

(1) A headband once worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

(2) A headband for the hair.

(3) A pouch or net-like hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

(4) In zoology, a long fleshy appendage of pendulous red skin that hangs over the upper beak of male turkeys.

(5) A short line of horsehair, gut, monofilament etc, by which a fishhook is attached to a longer (and usually heavier) line; a snell.

(6) A piece of clothing to keep the neck warm; a neck-warmer.

(7) To bind or confine (the hair) with a snood or (in other contexts) to put on a snood.

Pre 900: From the Middle English snod (fillet, ribbon (the plural was snoden)), from the Old English snōd (headdress, fillet, ribbon for the hair), from the Proto-Germanic snōdō (rope, string), from the primitive Indo-European snohtéh (yarn, thread), from sneh & snehi- (to twist, wind, weave, plait).  It was cognate with the Scots snuid (snood) and the Swedish snod & snodd (twist, twine) and related in various ways to the Old Saxon snōva (necklace), the Old Norse snúa (to turn, twist) & snúðr (a twist, twirl), the Old Irish snathe (thread) and the English needle.  The alternative spellings were snod & sneed, both now obsolete.  In Dutch, snood means “villanous and criminal.  The Dutch form was from the Middle Dutch snôde, from the Old Dutch snōthi, from the Proto-Germanic snauþuz (bald, naked, poor), from the primitive Indo-European ksnéw-tu-s, from the root ksnew- (to scrape, sharpen) and cognates included the German schnöde and the Old Norse snauðr.  Snood is a noun & verb and snooding & snooded are verbs; the noun plural is snoods.

In the Medieval period, snoods were most associated with young unmarried girls, the implication being “in a state of maidenhood or virginity” so were something like advertising one’s status on Facebook as “single”.  Merely adorning one’s hair with a snood was of course no guarantee of chastity so the system was open to abuse but social media profiles can be misleading so in a thousand or more years little seems to have changed.  Modern adaptations of the word have been opportunistic.  Since 1938 snood has been used to describe the pouch or net-like “bags” use to contain hear at the back of the scalp and these were well-documented as widely worn in the Middle Ages but nobody seems to have thought them snoods which were culturally specific.  The accessories dating from the late 1930s were sold in parallel with conventional hairnets and were worn almost exclusively by women, long hair for men not then a thing in the West.  Typically, they were a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head but differed from a hairnet proper in that the fit was looser, and they were constructed with a noticeably thicker yarn, weaved in a coarser mesh.  The way they were worn varied greatly according to the preference of the user and the nature of the hair to be contained.  Sometimes, a tighter-mesh band around the forehead or crown, running over or behind the ears and under the nape of the neck held things in place, the woven “bag” containing the hair dangling at the back.  There were also snoods fashioned from a solid fabric, but the advertising of the era suggests these were for fashion rather than function and tended to be colored to match an outfit.  Snood-like constructions are also worn by some women in a variety of religions which demand some form of hair-covering although the interpretation varies.  In the post-war years as health regulations began more rigorously to be imposed in food production and other sensitive facilities, snood seems briefly seems to have been used to describe the hairnets which were being mandated for employees and others in the space.  There were “hair snoods” and “beard snoods” but it was a brief linguistic phenomenon and soon it was hairnets all the way down.

Samir Nasri (b 1987) in football snood.

In Association football (soccer), the word was for some years used to describe the specialized garments players used as “neck-warmers”.  Popular with some players and understandably so in a sport played in the depths of the northern winter, the team managers were divided on their desirability and there were reports that as recently as 2009, (male) media commentators (presumably from a nice warm commentary position) were recorded as saying snoods as neck-warmers were “unmanly”.  Use of such as word would now probably see a commentator cancelled (or worse) and if may be that if a player chose again to wear one on grounds of the ubiquitous H&S (health & safety), they might find officialdom too timid to react. 

Nike Football Snood.

Demand clearly exists because manufacturers continue to maintain the product lines despite bans on their use at the professional level, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and the Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA, the International Association Football Federation) acting in 2011.  The concern apparently was on grounds of player safety, the suspicion that injuries might result from a snood being pulled from behind and in those circumstances the awarding a penalty for the infringement would not be sufficient because the need was to avoid injuries, not simply punish transgressors.  However, there was no empirical data and the risks were all theoretical so both authorities outlawed the things on the technical basis of them being “not an approved part of the football kit”.  The football snoods aren’t actually exclusively “neck-warmers” because, fully unfolded, they actually can cover the nose and ears, both vulnerable areas in cold conditions and in competitions where they’re not banned, they’re popular with goalkeepers, usually the most static position on the pitch.  So, instead of being thought of as neck-warmers, they’re really half-balaclavas and in the US, where “football” is something different, they’re often called “soccer scarfs”.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates the difference in a muffler (designed for warmth, left) and a scarf (designed to be decorative, centre).  A football player is a fully extended football snoot, worn in extended, half-balaclava style (right); in the US these are sometimes called “soccer scarfs”.

There is a logic to that although “soccer muffler” might be more precise although, lacking the alliterative punch, it’s unlikely to catch on.  Until well into the twentieth century, muffler and scarf were used interchangeably but with the introduction of the baffled mechanical device used to reduce the noise from car engines, the automotive use swamped the linguistic space and muffler became less associated with the neck accessory.  Historically, muffler was mostly British in use, Americans always preferring scarf but scarf is now almost universal although in the upper reaches of the fashion business however, the distinction is sometimes still drawn between the two, a scarf defined as an accessory to enhance the look and made from fabrics like silk, cotton or linen whereas a muffler is more utilitarian, bulkier and intended to protect from the cold and thus made from wool, mohair or something good at retaining body-heat.  Confusingly, muffler occasionally is used in commerce as a label of something which looks like a small blanket, worn over the shoulders and resembling an open poncho.

Punt

Punt (pronounced puhnt or poont)

(1) In various football codes, a kick in which the ball is dropped and then kicked before it touches the ground (as opposed to the drop kick or place kick); in some codes used casually of any long, high kick.

(2) In nautical use, a small, shallow boat having a flat bottom and square ends, usually used for short outings on rivers or lakes and propelled by the use of a pole pivoted against the waterway’s bottom.

(3) The monetary unit (100 pence; the Irish pound) of the Republic of Ireland until the adoption of the Euro in 2002.

(4) An ancient Egyptian name of an area in north-east Africa, believed to be in the region of modern-day Somaliland.

(5) In ichthyology, the action of certain fish which “walk” along the seafloor, using their fins as limbs; a fish so “walking” is said to be “a punter, punting”. .

(6) In glassblowing (as both punt & punty), a thin glass or iron rod which temporarily is attached to a larger piece in order better to manipulate the larger piece.

(7) An indentation in the base of a wine bottle.

(8) In the game of faro, a point; to play basset, baccara, faro etc.

(9) To propel a small boat by thrusting against the bottom of a lake, stream, canal or other suitable waterway, especially with a pole.

(10) To convey in or as if in a punt.

(11) To punt a football by means of the kick.

(12) To travel in a punt.

(13) In informal use, to equivocate, or delay (based on the idea of kicking a ball away).

(14) In gambling slang, to gamble place a bet, historically most used in horse racing but use has spread with the proliferation of betting on other sporting events; in certain card games, to lay a stake against the bank; in financial trading (a form of gambling), to make a highly speculative investment, if based on intuition (guesswork) rather than insider trading.

(15) In colloquial use (1) to retreat from one's objective; to abandon an effort one still notionally supports, (2) to make the best choice from a set of non-ideal alternatives or (3) a (usually speculative) guess.

Pre 1000: From the late Old English punt (flat or shallow-bottomed, square-ended, mastless river boat), from the Latin pontō (Gaulish flat-bottomed boat, pontoon (in the sense of “floating bridge”)) an the so-called “British Latin” ponto was re-adopted from the Middle Low German punte (ferry boat) or the Middle Dutch ponte (ferry boat) of the same origin and not attested in Middle English.  The use in Latin to describe the "floating bridges" built ad-hoc by the military for river crossings was from the Latin pontem (nominative pons) (bridge), from the primitive Indo-European root pent- (to tread, to go) but it may also have been influenced by the Old French cognate pont (large, flat boat).  The verb forms describing movement was base on the idea of "to propel as a punt is moved by pushing with a pole against the bed of the body of water” dates from 1816.  The use of the noun punter in US football dates from 1888 (based on the nautical use) and was by the early twentieth century in the UK, Australia & New Zealand applied to gamblers.  This connection in the 1960s was extended to the term “the average punter”, a synonym for “the average person” and was a classist notion based on the idea the typical working class individual gambled (as well as smoked and drank) and in that vein, it became popular police slang to describe s prostitute's clients.  Punter also picked up specialized meanings including (1) in rock-climbing a beginner or unskilled climber. In Scotland one who trades with a gang but is not a gang member and (3) in internet slang, a program used forcibly to disconnect another user from a chat room or other multi-user environment.  Punt is a noun & verb, punter is a noun and punting & punted are verbs; the noun plural is punts.

Ready for a punt: Lindsay & Ali Lohan, Melbourne Cup, Flemington Racecourse, November 2019.

In various football codes, a punt kick is a kick in which the ball is dropped and then kicked before it touches the ground (as opposed to the drop kick or place kick although in some codes it’s used casually of any long, high kick (often as “punted it down the field).  The use dates from 1845 in rugby (now called rugby union) and is though derived from either (1) from the notion of “propelling a boat by shoving” or (2) a variant of the Midlands dialect bunt (to push; butt with the head) which is of unknown origin but may be echoic (compare bunt).  The slang use in US universities and colleges meaning “give up, withdraw from a course or subject to avoid receiving a failing grade) was based on the use of the punt-kick in American football when used as a tactic when the ball can’t be advanced.  The term appears in the rugby codes, American football, Australian Rules football (AFL), Gaelic football and describes kicking a ball dropped from the hands before it hits the ground.  In the rugby codes, the mode of kick is a matter of importance because the alternative “drop kick” involves a player dropping the ball in front of them, allowing its slightly to bounce before taking the kick.  Under the rules of these codes, dropping the ball in front is a “knock on” and subject to a penalty unless done as a prelude to a dropkick.  A player, having inadvertently dropped the ball will sometimes attempt a kick to disguise the error and thus avoid the penalty so in such cases it’s a matter of judgment for the referee whether it was a drop kick or a knock on.  The special form “torpedo punt” was from AFL and referred to a flat, long kick.  A “punt protector” was a team member whose role was to negate the opposition’s use of the punt kick, the “punt returner” a similar (sometimes identical) role.  The “checkside punt” (the banana punt in Australia) describes a kick which makes the ball spin and bend away from the player's body (they can be intentional or an error).  The use in sport also influenced the figurative use in the sense of “to equivocate, or delay” and was based on the kicking a ball away and is related to the idea of “kicking the can down the road”.  It’s sometimes appears in the phrase “punted it into the long grass) (ie “make it disappear or go away”).

In glassblowing, a punt or a punty was a “thin glass (or in certain cases an iron substitute) rod used in manipulating hot glass”, temporarily attached to a larger piece in order better to handle the larger piece.  Dating from the 1660s, it was from the French pontil, a diminutive form from the Latin punctum (a point), from a nasalized form of the primitive Indo-European root peuk- (to prick).  The use to describe various forms of betting dates seems first to have been used in the early eighteenth century and was from the French ponter (to punt), from ponte (bet laid against the banker; point in faro), from the Spanish punto (point), from the Latin punctum.

Depiction of a mounted punt gun.

The punt gun was a large scale shotgun used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the large-scale, commercial harvesting of water birds.  Too large to (safely or accurately) be fired if held by an individual, the weapons were solidly mounted on the punts (although other vessels were also used) hunters used to achieve close proximity to their targets.  The earliest versions were literally up-scaled shotguns including the obviously superfluous shoulder-stock and were supplied without any mounting hardware, owners fabricating their own or adapting other devices but specialized designs quickly emerged.  These were sold with the mounting hardware fixed to the gun and were supplied with a kit which included a platform for the boat, most offering some adjustments to suit different dimensions.

Illustrative photograph of punt gun.  Some 12 feet (3.7 m) in length, they weren't actually used like this.

Punt guns were usually custom-designed and varied widely, but could have bore diameters exceeding 2 inches (51 mm) and the load could be as much as 1 lb (.45 kg), a single discharge able to kill some four dozen birds on the water’s surface.  Because of the power of the weapon, they were solidly mounted so the aiming was achieved by aligning the bow of the punt with the intended line of fire and such was the force exerted that in still water a punt would move backwards by several inches with every discharge.  Punts equipped with a punt gun can thus be thought of as small-scale monitors, the class of warship which carried a single, large bore canon although on monitors, the gun was in a turret and could thus be aimed independently of the direction the of the hull.  To maximize the slaughter, hunters would sometimes assemble punts in a flotilla of up to a dozen punts, their formation arranged to provide a wild field of fire and one optimized to limit the wastage (ie there being no need to kill a bird more than once).  One barrage could thus kill hundreds.

Take aim and fire.

Punt guns were usually muzzle-loaded and double and even triple barrelled versions were built and they allowed a method of hunting which was so shockingly efficient that in the US, by the mid nineteenth century, waterfowl stocks had been depleted to such an extent that almost all state governments their use.  Punts guns are prized by collectors and at exhibitions a firing is a popular part of the show and in the UK, they are occasionally still used by the military for ceremonial purposes although the loads are now optimized for volume rather than lethality.

Frango

Frango (pronounced fran-goh)

(1) A young chicken (rare in English and in Portuguese, literally “chicken”).

(2) Various chicken dishes (an un-adapted borrowing from the Portuguese).

(3) In football (soccer) (1) a goal resulting from a goalkeeper’s error and (2) the unfortunate goalkeeper.

(4) The trade name of a chocolate truffle, now sold in Macy's department stores. 

In English, “frango” is most used in the Portuguese sense of “chicken” (variously “a young chicken”, “chicken meat”, “chicken disk” etc) and was from the earlier Portuguese frângão of unknown origin.  In colloquial figurative use, a frango can be “a young boy” and presumably that’s an allusion to the use referring to “a young chicken”.  In football (soccer), it’s used (sometimes trans-nationally) of a goal resulting from an especially egregious mistake by the goalkeeper (often described in English by the more generalized “howler”.  In Brazil, where football teams are quasi-religious institutions, such a frango (also as frangueiro) is personalized to describe the goalkeeper who made the error and on-field blunders are not without lethal consequence in South America, the Colombian centre-back Andrés Escobar (1967–1994) murdered in the days after the 1994 FIFA World Cup, an event reported as a retribution for him having scored the own goal which contributed to Colombia's elimination from the tournament. Frango is a noun; the noun plural is frangos.

The Classical Latin verb frangō (to break, to shatter) (present infinitive frangere, perfect active frēgī, supine frāctum) which may have been from the primitive Indo-European bhreg- (to break) by not all etymologists agree because descendants have never been detected in Celtic or Germanic forks, thus the possibility it might be an organic Latin creation.  The synonyms were īnfringō, irrumpō, rumpō & violō.  As well as memorable art, architecture and learning, Ancient Rome was a world also of violence and conflict and there was much breaking of stuff, the us the figurative use of various forms of frangō to convey the idea of (1) to break, shatter (a promise, a treaty, someone's ideas (dreams, projects), someone's spirit), (2) to break up into pieces (a war from too many battles, a nation) and (3) to reduce, weaken (one's desires, a nation).

A frangō in the sense of the Classical Latin: Lindsay Lohan with broken left wrist (fractured in two places in an unfortunate fall at Milk Studios during New York Fashion Week) and 355 ml (12 fluid oz) can of Rehab energy drink, Los Angeles, September 2006.  The car is a 2005 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG (R230; 2004-2011) which earlier had featured in the tabloids after a low-speed crash.  The R230 range (2001-2011) was unusual because of the quirk of the SL 550 (2006-2011), a designation used exclusively in the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).

The descendents from the Classical Latin frangō (to break, to shatter) included the Aromanian frãngu (to break, to destroy; to defeat), the Asturian frañer (to break; to smash) & francer (to smash), the English fract (to break; to violate (long obsolete)) & fracture ((1) an instance of breaking, a place where something has broken, (2) in medicine a break in a bone or cartilage and (3) in geology a fault or crack in a rock), the Friulian franzi (to break), the German Fraktur ((1) in medicine, a break in a bone & (2) a typeface) & Fraktion (2) in politics, a faction, a parliamentary grouping, (3) in chemistry, a fraction (in the sense of a component of a mixture), (4) a fraction (part of a whole) and (5) in the German-speaking populations of Switzerland, South Tyrol & Liechtenstein, a hamlet (adapted from the Italian frazione)), the Italian: frangere (1) to break (into pieces), (2) to press or crush (olives), (3) in figurative use and as a literary device, to transgress (a commandment, a convention of behavior etc), (4) in figurative use to weaken (someone's resistance, etc.) and (5) to break (of the sea) (archaic)), the Ladin franjer (to break into pieces), the Old Franco provençal fraindre (to break; significantly to damage), the Old & Middle French fraindre (significantly to damage), the Portuguese franzir (to frown (to form wrinkles in forehead)), the Romanian frânge (1) to break, smash, fracture & (2) in figurative use, to defeat) and frângere (breaking), the Old Spanish to break), and the Spanish frangir (to split; to divide).

Portuguese lasanha de frango (chicken lasagna).

In Portuguese restaurants, often heard is the phrase de vaca ou de frango? (beef or chicken?) and that’s because so many dishes offer the choice, much the same as in most of the world (though obviously not India).  In fast-food outlets, the standard verbal shorthand for “fried chicken” is “FF” which turns out to be one of the world’s most common two letter abbreviations, the reason being one “F” representing the once infamous "F-word", one of English language’s most un-adapted exports.  One mystery for foreigners sampling Portuguese cuisine is: Why is chicken “frango” but chicken soup is “sopa de galinha?”  That’s because frango is used to mean “a young male chicken” while a galinha is an adult female.  Because galinha meat doesn’t possess the same tender quality as that of a frango, (the females bred and retained mostly for egg production), slaughtered galinhas traditionally were minced or shredded and used for dishes such as soups, thus: sopa de galinha (also as canja de galinha or the clipped caldo and in modern use, although rare, sopa de frango is not unknown).  That has changed as modern techniques of industrial farming have resulted in a vastly expanded supply of frango meat so, by volume, most sopa de galinha is now made using frangos (the birds killed young, typically between 3-4 months).  Frangos have white, drier, softer meat while that of the galinha is darker, less tender and juicer and the difference does attract chefs in who do sometimes offer a true sopa de galinha as a kind of “authentic peasant cuisine”.

There are also pintos (pintinhos in the diminutive) which are chicks only a few days old but these are no longer a part of mainstream Portuguese cuisine although galetos (chicks killed between at 3-4 weeks) are something of a delicacy, usually roasted.  The reproductive males (cocks or roosters in English use) are galos.  There is no tradition, anywhere in Europe, of eating the boiled, late-developing fertilized eggs (ie a bird in the early stages of development), a popular dish in the Philippines and one which seems to attract virulent disapprobation from many which culturally is interesting because often, the same critics happily will consume both the eggs and the birds yet express revulsion at even the sight of the intermediate stage.  Such attitudes are cultural constructs and may be anthropomorphic because there’s some resemblance to a human foetus.

Lindsay Lohan at Macy's and Teen People's Freaky Friday Mother/Daughter Fashion Show, Macy's Herald Square, New York City, August 2003.  It's hoped she had time for a Frango.

Now sold in Macy’s, Frangos are a chocolate truffle created in 1918 for sale in Frederick & Nelson department stores.  Although originally infused with mint, many variations ensued and they became popular when made available in the Marshall Field department stores which in 1929 acquired Frederick & Nelson although it’s probably their distribution by Macy's which remains best known.  Marshall Field's marketing sense was sound and they turned the Frango into something of a cult, producing them in large melting pots on the 13th floor of the flagship Marshall Field's store on State Street until 1999 when production was out-sourced to a third party manufacturer in Pennsylvania.  In the way of modern corporate life, the Frango has had many owners, a few changes in production method and packaging and some appearances in court cases over rights to the thing but it remains a fixture on Macy’s price lists, the troubled history reflected in the “Pacific Northwest version” being sold in Macy's Northwest locations in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon while the “Seattle version” is available in Macy's Northwest establishments.  There are differences between the two and each has its champions but doubtless there are those who relish both.

A patent application (with a supporting trademark document) for the Frango was filed in 1918, the name a re-purposing of a frozen dessert sold in the up-market tea-room at Frederick & Nelson's department store in Seattle, Washington.  The surviving records suggest the “Seattle Frangos” were flavoured not with mint but with maple and orange but what remains uncertain is the origin of the name.  One theory is the construct was Fr(ederick’s) + (t)ango which is romantic but there are also reports employees were told, if asked, to respond it was from Fr(ederick) –an(d) Nelson Co(mpany) with the “c” switched to a “g” because the word “Franco” had a long established meaning.  Franco was a word-forming element meaning “French” or “the Franks”, from the Medieval Latin combining form Franci (the Franks), thus, by extension, “the French”.  Since the early eighteenth century it had been used when forming English phrases & compound words including “Franco-Spanish border” (national boundary between France & Spain), Francophile (characterized by excessive fondness of France and all things French (and thus its antonym Francophobe)) and Francophone (French speaking).

Hitler and Franco, photographed at their day-long meeting at Hendaye, on the Franco-Spanish border, 23 October 1940.  Within half a decade, Hitler would kill himself; still ruling Spain, Franco died peacefully in his bed, 35 years later.

Remarkably, the Frango truffles have been a part of two political controversies.  The first was a bit of a conspiracy theory, claiming the sweet treats were originally called “Franco Mints”, the name changed only after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in which the (notionally right-wing and ultimately victorious) Nationalist forces were led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) and the explanation was that Marshall Field wanted to avoid adverse publicity.  Some tellings of the tale claim the change was made only after the Generalissimo’s meeting with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) at Hendaye on 23 October 1940.  Their discussions concerned Spain's participation in the War against the British but it proved most unsatisfactory for the Germans, the Führer declaring as he left that he'd rather have "three of four teeth pulled out" than have to again spend a day with the Caudillo.  Unlike Hitler, Franco was a professional soldier, thought war a hateful business best avoided and, more significantly, had a shrewd understanding of the military potential of the British Empire and the implications for the war of the wealth and industrial might of the United States.  The British were fortunate Franco took the view he did because had he agreed to afford the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) the requested cooperation to enable them to seize control of Gibraltar, the Royal Navy might have lost control of the Mediterranean, endangering the vital supplies of oil from the Middle East, complicating passage to the Indian Ocean and beyond; it would have transformed the strategic position in the whole hemisphere.  However, in the archives is the patent application form for “Frangos” dated 1 June 1918 and there has never been any evidence to support the notion “Franco” was ever used for the chocolate truffles.

Macy's Dark Mint Frangos.

The other political stoush (late nineteenth century Antipodean slang meaning a "fight or small-scale brawl") came in 1999 when, after seventy years, production of Frangos was shifted from the famous melting pots on the thirteenth floor of Marshall Field's flagship State Street store to Gertrude Hawk Chocolates in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, the decision taken by the accountants at the Dayton-Hudson Corporation which had assumed control in 1990.  The rationale for this shift was logical, demand for Frangos having grown far beyond the capacity of the relatively small space in State Street to meet demand but it upset many locals, the populist response led Richard Daley (b 1942; mayor (Democratic Party) of Chicago Illinois 1989-2011), the son of his namesake father (1902–1976; mayor (Democratic Party) of Chicago, Illinois 1955-1976) who in 1968 simultaneously achieved national infamy and national celebrity (one’s politics dictating how one felt) in his handling of the police response to the violence which beset the 1968 Democratic National Convention held that year in the city.  The campaign to have the Frangos made instead by a Chicago-based chocolate house was briefly a thing but was ignored by Dayton-Hudson and predictably, whatever the lingering nostalgia for the melting pots, the pragmatic Mid-Westerners adjusted to the new reality and, with much the same enthusiasm, soon were buying the Pennsylvanian imports.

Macy's Frango Mint Trios.

Doubtlessly to the delight of economists (sweet-toothed or not), there appears to be a “Frango spot market”.  Although the increasing capacity of AI (artificial intelligence) has improved the mechanics of “dynamic pricing” (responding in real-time to movements in demand), as long ago as the Christmas season in 2014, CBS News ran what they called the “Macy's State Street Store Frango Mint Price Tracker”, finding the truffle’s price was subject to fluctuations as varied over the holiday period as movements in the cost of gas (petrol).  On the evening of Thanksgiving, “early bird” shoppers could buy a 1 lb one-pound box of Frango mint “Meltaways” for US$11.99, the price jumping by the second week in December to US$14.99 although that still represented quite a nominal discount from the RRP (recommended retail price) of US$24.00.  Within days, the same box was again listed at US$11.99 and a survey of advertising from the previous season confirmed that in the weeks immediately after Christmas, the price had fallen to US$9.99.  It may be time for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to open a market for Frango Futures (the latest “FF”!).