Football

Football (pronounced foot-bawl)

(1) As Association Football (in some places known for historic reasons as "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 (still sometimes called "Gridiron" outside North America), 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 (used as Nuclear Football, Atomic football, Black Box or Black Bag) (by convention with initial capitals).

(7) Used as a modifier: football club, football ground, football fanatic, football pitch, football hooligan, football fan, football ultra, 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.  Football is a noun & verb, footballer & footballization are nouns, footballing is a verb & adjective and footballed is a verb; the noun plural is footballs.

Lindsay Lohan in “gridiron” gear, Life Size (2000).  Born in 1986, Ms Lohan missed the fashion industry's first fetishization of shoulder pads.

Although in international use now less common (“NFL” now preferred), the term "gridiron" is still used to describe American football including the NFL (National Football League).  The word "gridiron" 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 the yard lines still in use today but the name stuck.  In the thirteenth century, a gridiron was an instrument of torture on which victims were chained before being burned by fire and in the same vein (though less gruesomely), in the sixteenth century it described a similar wrought grate on which meat and fish were broiled over hot coals (the same concept as the modern BBQ (barbecue)).  In modern use, it's used of lattice-like structures (though not necessarily of iron) including in ship repair where an grid of metal is used as an open frame supporting vessels, permitting examination, cleaning and repairs when out of the water,  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 New Zealand land law where "to grid iron" was to purchase land with the boundaries drawn so remaining adjacent parcels were smaller than the minimum able to be registered in fee simple (ie a freehold title), thus preserving the buyer's view and eliminating any threat of gaining undesirable neighbors.  Globally, the cultural and economic impacts of soccer have long been obvious.  Although Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; President of the RCP (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 footy) 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.  Australian Football is a game in which points can be scored only by kicking the football between the goalposts and its rules first were written at a time when rugby was quite similar.  In the mid-nineteenth century, although in rugby the concept of the "try" (a player with ball in hand grounding the ball behind the opposition's tryline), there were no points awarded for the achievement; what the try's position on the tryline determined was the place on the field from which the conversion (kicking the football between the goalposts) would be taken and the closer to the posts a try was scored, the easier the kick.  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” but, elsewhere on planet Earth, because that that word described very different games, “gridiron” survived as a piece of product differentiation.  Realizing the linguistic battle was lost, the USFA (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 USSFA (United States Soccer Football Association) before deciding to remove any confusion, deleting entirely any use of “football”.

Ivana Knöll at the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN (United Nations))) World Cup in Qatar, 2022.

Noted Instagram influencer, German-born Ivana Knöll (b 1992) was a finalist in the Miss Croatia competition in 2016 and was probably the most photographed fan to appear at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, always attired in a variety of outfits using the Croatian national symbol of the red and white checkerboard, matching the home strip worn by the team.  Her outfits were much admired and she was a popular accessory sought by Qatari men for their selfies.  She has reappeared at the 2026 World Cup and her swimwear line (including the Crokini (the construct being Cro(atia) + (bi)kini)) is now available through her KnollDoll website.

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 carrying the materials required for a US president to launch nuclear strikes 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.  

The Nuclear Football

USN (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; POTUS 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 stick (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.

Despite the troubled state of the world, the Nuclear Football has of late not much been in the news but it did gain a mention in one reaction to crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) criticism of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) 250 event staged in June 2026 by Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) in the grounds of the White House.  Crooked Hillary had damned the idea of UFC 250 as soon as it had been announced and renewed her attack just before the event began posting: “Remember, during today's literal cage match on the White House grounds: No matter what, it's not his house.  It's our house.  Get a hat, coaster, or sticker to support groups and candidates who will respect the form and the function of the people's house.”  Sensibly, her post was on an account that blocked replies from others than those she’d pre-approved.

Despite that attempt preemptively to censor, the backlash was not long coming, crooked Hillary accused of “selective outrage”, those commenting mentioning some of the scandals from the eight years she and her husband (Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001)) lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Scandals associated with crooked Hillary are of course not hard to find and from among those located in the White House, her critics included the pair “literally renting out the Lincoln Bedroom” and, of course, the then president’s salacious behavior with youthful intern MonicaLewinsky (b 1973, with whom Bill Clinton “did not have sexual relations”).  Also mentioned was the “well-documented vandalism and theft of furniture” that occurred upon Bill & Hill vacating the building, the GAO (Government Accountability Office) assessing the damage alone at US$15,000.  Amusingly, the Clinton acolytes had responded to that by saying the damage “was commensurate with that of prior administrations” which is just a glossed admission of guilt meaning: “They did it too”.  At law, it’s known as the tu quoque (from the Latin tu quoque, (literally “and thou also”), best translated as “you did too”) defense; it’s rarely invoked because it’s just an admission of guilt and, in most cases, is not useful even as at attempt at mitigation.  It wasn’t permitted at the Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) of the Nazi war criminals and in his memoirs (1952) wily old Franz von Papen (1879-1969; Chancellor of Germany 1932 & vice chancellor 1933-1934 who secured one of three acquittals at the trial) admitted “It is true that the tu quoque is a bad defence”.

One who really warmed the chance to reply to crooked Hillary’s critique was the retired USAF (US Air Force) lieutenant colonel who for two years “…carried the Nuclear Football for your husband inside that 'people's house' you're suddenly so precious about.  I saw it all up close for two years… while Bill was getting blow jobs in the Oval Office from an intern and groping female Air Force enlisted crew on Air Force One.  You lecture about 'respect for the institution' while your husband lost the nuclear codes.  And when you finally slinked out in 2001?  You and your crew trashed the place—vandalism, theft, the Government Accountability Office confirmed it.  Sit down, bitch, the adults are back in charge.”  Compared with that, the post on the Republican Party’s official account verged on an act of kindness, suggesting crooked Hillary should “sit this one out.”  

Set of the War Room in Dr Strangelove (1964).  It’s presumably apocryphal but it’s said Ronald Reagan (1911-2004, POTUS 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; POTUS 1953-1961) although in those days it contained purely the vital information and none of the independent communications connectivity which apparently was added only in 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; POTUS 2021-2025) who was in town for the G7 (Group of Seven advanced democratic economies) 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; POTUS 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 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, as a footnote, while for decades the Hiroshima bomb was a genuine one-off (using uranium rather than plutonium), analysts believe in recent years uranium may again have become fashionable with recent adopters such as Pakistan and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)) building them because of the relative simplicity of construction.

For obvious reasons, the US constitution is silent on the matter of nuclear weapons and despite attempts by the Congress to wrest war-making powers from the executive, the implications of the title “Commander-in-Chief” mean it’s the POTUS who enjoys the singular right to order the use of nuclear weapons.  Congress, the courts, the Secretary of War (Defense) and the military top brass have no veto over a presidential launch order, that arrangement a product of the understanding during the high Cold War the warning time of a nuclear attack on the US would be only a few minutes.  A president can of course consult military and civilian advisers but is not bound to follow their advice.  Under the SOP (standard operating procedure), the specifics of the order would be derived from the pre-planned response options carried in the Nuclear Football; as well as target choices there is also the nature of the strike, ranging from “limited” to “massive”.  For the POTUS’s order to be acted upon, they must verify their identity by use of a token (called “the biscuit”) which contains unique authentication codes (on a challenge-response model).  A physical card always carried by the POTUS, the frequency with which the biscuit is updated has never been released but analysts suspect there’s an adherence to standard cryptographic security practices which would dictate a regular (perhaps daily) swaps.  Once authenticated, the order is transmitted through the NC3 system (nuclear command, control and communications), ending up with those personnel who trigger the launch(es).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

So, in the legal sense, there are no checks & balances operating upon what unarguably is the most serious and consequential act a POTUS could take.  There are steps in the process at which the actions of individuals could stop the strike but that would demand a direct defiance of the chain of command.  The role of the Secretary of War (Defense) is to verify the authenticity of the order and then transmit it to the military where, as a direct order from the Commander-in-Chief, it should unquestionably be carried out.  However, military officers are required to refuse to carry out an order if they deem it clearly unlawful under the laws of armed conflict (and that would include a strike aimed at a purely civilian target with no military rationale).  The legal theory underpinning that is well-understood but what was intriguing was that during the first Trump administration, it was alleged senior military officers had decided among themselves to act as an informal “review committee” of orders coming from the White House, effectively creating a “sandbox” where, if thought necessary, orders could be “buried” while the generals and admirals discussed what to do.  When that was revealed, there was controversy but the approach wasn’t without precedent.  During the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974) it wasn’t unusual for the president when “tired and emotional” to order military strikes on targets here and there (he never suggested using nuclear weapons).  Those orders his aides ignored and when the next morning dutifully they reported their disobedience, the president’s response was always: “Good”.

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 presumably (As)soc(iation football) +c+ -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.  The special verb use (soccered & soccering) happens in Australian Rules Football and describes a player kicking the football directly off the ground, without the use of the hands.  The forms soccerer & soccerist both mean “a soccer player” but are now used only humorously.  Soccerplex (a sports complex with facilities for playing soccer but with other ancillary (other sports, training, gyms, commercial outlets etc) installations is a word unique to North America.  A Socceroo is a member of the Socceroos (the Australian national soccer team, the construct being socce(r) + (kanga)roos.  Soccermania describes an intense enthusiasm for soccer which may manifest as an obsessive interest; the forms soccermananic and soccerology are both non-standard but have been used in the context of the afflicted.  Soccermania differs from soccer hooligan (or football hooligan, exemplified by the violent Italian “Ultras”) in that it doesn’t usually manifest as violent or anti-social behaviour.  Soccer is a noun & verb, soccerplex, soccermania, soccerer & soccerists are nouns, soccered & soccering are verbs and soccerlike is an adjective; the only noun plural in even occasional use is soccerplexes although plurals of the derived forms (soccer fields, soccer players, soccer balls, soccer clubs etc) are common.  

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 briefly it was used as 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 and 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.  Those at the University of Cambridge did create their own rule book but it was one of many, this proliferation leading 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 the professional code rugby league emerged, the name “rugby union” was used to distinguish the original and to this day the clipped terms “Rugby” & “Union” remain in use.

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 “footy” 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 the adoption of "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 footy) 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 battle was lost, the USFA (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 USSFA (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.

At least some of those involved professionally with structural linguistics are football fans (maybe even afflicted by soccermania) and a number have discussed the soccer vs football phenomenon.  In most cases, the pattern of use easily is explained by the history of use in different parts of the world and the general tendency for “football” to be applied to the other sports in which kicking a ball is a part.  What however most interests those of a certain age is that the use in England of “soccer” seems now really to upset some people.  However, those old enough to remember the way things used to be done recal that as late as the 1970s, nobody seemed concerned about such things with “football” and “soccer” being used interchangeably.  All seem to agree the origin of “soccer” is uncertain but the use of the element “soc” from “association” is the most plausible explanation, despite the pronunciations not aligning.  Anyway, until there’s evidence of another origin, it’s thought to be soc(c) + -er and all agree the word definitely first was used at the University of Oxford as a coining by students.  By at least the mid-1880s it was appearing in print in various parts of England (the short-lived variant spelling “socker” thought a product of oral transmission and that may have seemed to make sense given socks are worn on the feet used to kick the ball), after which it spread to other parts of the English-speaking world.  The documentary evidence makes clear British newspapers preferred “football” but well into the 1980s “soccer” also often appeared, apparently without inducing many complaints.  So why in the twenty-first century is there among some in the UK an objection to hearing “their game” described as “soccer”?  Nobody seems to have linked that development to any specific event or social movement and it’s though just an example of (1) the English fans proprietorial attitude to the “world game” being “our game” and (2) a resistance to the “linguistic imperialism” of US English, a long established process greatly accelerated by the internet and social media.

The well connected Sepp Blatter (b 1936; President of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football) that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN), 1998-2015) with people he has met.

(1) With Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023; prime minister of Italy 1994-1995, 2001-2006 & 2008-2011).

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

(3) With Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022).

(4) With the FIFA World Cup trophy (which hasn’t been a "cup" since 1974 when the finals were contested by 16 teams (expanded to 24 1n 1982, 32 in 1998 and 48 in 2026)).

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

(6) With Benjamin Netanyahu (b 1949; prime-minister of Israel 1996-1999, 2009-2021 and since 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 DoJ (Department of Justice) 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 UEFA (Union des associations européennes de football (Union of European Football Associations), the peak body controlling football in Europe) 2007-2015), the supporting documentation associated with the payment said to be about as extensive as what might be in the petty-cash tin, stapled to the receipt for a packet of biscuits.  Platini had long been assumed to be Blatter’s designated successor.  Blatter appealed the decision and in February 2016 FIFA’s appeals committee reduced the ban to six years, a ruling upheld by the CAS (Tribunal arbitral du sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport)) 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.

Bellwether

Bellwether (pronounced bel-weth-er)

(1) A wether or other male sheep that leads the flock, usually bearing a bell.

(2) A person or thing that assumes the leadership or forefront, as of a profession or industry.

(3) Anything that indicates future trends (gauge, indicator, sign).

(4) As “bellwether state”, “bellwether seat” etc, an electoral division or constituency which, over a long period, has tended to predict the outcome in wider electoral contests (presidential, congressional, provincial, national etc).

(5) In finance, as “bellwether stock”, a stock or bond widely believed to be an indicator of the overall market's condition and future direction.

1400-1450: The construct was bell + wether.  The late thirteenth century word clearly existed in Anglo-Latin but in the late twelfth century it had been used as a surname.  The prevalent meaning became “lead sheep” (with a collar on which a bell was hung) of a domesticated flock, while the figurative sense (leader, chief) dates from the mid-fourteenth century.  Used in its original sense (a sheep with a bell attached to a collar), bellwether has no synonyms but they do exist when the term figuratively is applied (a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend; index), including trendsetter, trailblazer, front runner, pacesetter, leader, omen, gauge, indicator, sign & harbinger.  Thus in fashion, historically, the bellwether has tended variously to be what was first seen on the catwalks in Milan, Paris or London while in the years immediately after World War II (1939-1945), it was the artistic movements in New York rather than Paris that became the bellwether of global directions in the visual arts.  The alternative forms were bell-wether and (the now archaic) belwether; bellweather was a misspelling.  Bellwether is a noun; the noun plural is bellwethers.

A model in a “strapless fuchsia top and pants covered in shimmering, sculpted rose embellishments” from Rahul Mishra’s (b 1979) Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2025/2026 collection (Becoming Love), Paris Fashion Week, 2025.  Paris remains the industry’s bellwether but not everything seen on the catwalk is a harbinger.

Bell, in the sense of the percussive, hollow instrument (usually of cast or forged metal), typically cup-shaped with a flaring mouth, suspended from the vertex and rung by the strokes of a clapper, hammer, or the like (resonating upon impact producing “the sound of the bell”), was a pre-1000 word, from the Middle English belle, from the Old English belle & bellan (to roar), from the from Proto-West Germanic bellā, from the Proto-Germanic bellǭ, from the primitive Indo-European bel-; it was cognate with the West Frisian belle, the Old High German bellan, the Low German Belle & Bel, the German bellen (to bark), the Middle Dutch bellen & belen, the Old Norse belja, the Danish bjælde, the Faroese bjølla, the Icelandic bjalla, the Norwegian bjelle and the Swedish bjällra. and the Dutch bel.

Wether (originally “a castrated male sheep” but later used generally of “male sheep”) dates from pre 900 and was from the Middle English wether, wethir & wedyr, from the Old English weðer (ram), from the Middle English wether, wethir, wedyr, from Old English weþer (“a wether, ram”), from the Proto-West Germanic weþru, from the Proto-Germanic wethruz (source also of the Old Saxon wethar, the Old Norse veðr, the Old High German widar, the German Widder and the Gothic wiþrus (lamb)), literally “yearling’, from the primitive Indo-European root wet- (year), (source also of the Sanskrit vatsah (calf), the Greek etalon (yearling) and the Latin vitulus (calf, literally “yearling”); it was cognate with the Old Saxon withar, the Old High German widar, the Old Norse vethr and the Gothic withrus.  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European wet- (year).  The word wether came to be used both of male sheep (rams) and male goats (busks) castrated at a young age.  Usually, it’s safe practice for wethers to share paddocks or be housed with female sheep or goats, but intact rams & bucks usually are kept separately.  “Wether wool” was wool from previously shorn sheep.  The now obsolete dialectal form was wedder and in historic documents, as late as the nineteenth century wether was a (now archaic) spelling of weather.  Used as a verb, “to wether” was to castrate a male sheep or goat, the victim said to have been “wethered”.

In idiomatic use, a “bellwether state” “bellwether district” or “bellwether seat” is an electoral division or constituency which, over a long period, has tended to align with the outcome in wider electoral contests (presidential, congressional, provincial, national etc).  The classic example is the bellwether state in US presidential elections that historically votes for the winning candidate in successive elections (ie sometimes returning a Democratic and sometimes a Republican majority).  It’s an accepted part of the jargon of political science but really doesn’t adhere to the etymology of the original idea of sheep “following a leader”.  In elections, one state, district or constituency generally doesn’t “follow another” because votes tend simultaneously to be cast and although there are examples (in countries with multiple time-zones) of early results in one place become available while polling is still happening in others, (1) those results are always from a very small proportion of the vote (2) most votes in places still voting have already been cast and (3) the time overlap usually is brief.

A Lindsay Lohan-themed weathervane.

In the political context, rather than bellwether, a better term might be “weather vane”.  A weather vane is a type of anemoscope (the construct being anemo- (from the Ancient Greek ᾰ̓́νεμος (ắnemos) (wind)) + scope (from the Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō) (examine, inspect, look to or into, consider)) which is an elegant description of a simple, mechanical device rotating around one axis and attached to an elevated object such as a roof.  As a weather vane responds to the wind, it rotates to show the wind direction, the letters “N”, “S”, “E” & “W” displayed on static, extended prongs indicating respectively north, south, east & west.  The term is sometimes clipped to “vane” and they’re known also as “wind vanes” and “weathercocks”, the latter use dating from so many historically being formed in the silhouette of a rooster.  The reason “weather vane” works better than “bellwether” as a word indicating “current political climate” is that there’s no suggestion the wind “follows” the vane; instead, the position of the vane simply reflects the direction in which “the wind is blowing”.  That’s why it can be used to mean (1) an indicator; something that reflects what the current situation is and (2) a person or organization that changes their attitude and position based on the prevailing conditions rather than displaying any conviction.

So while a homophone, “weather” enjoys a different meaning from “wether”.  Weather was from the Middle English weder & wedir, from the Old English weder, from the Proto-West Germanic wedr, from the Proto-Germanic wedrą, from the primitive Indo-European wedrom (to blow).  The distinction between “the weather” and “the climate” is the former is the state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place (expressed via measures such as temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind strength etc) while the latter is the weather aggregated over periods (which can be a season, year, decade, century, epoch etc) or regions.  Such is the significance of the weather that the term “the weather” can refer explicitly to its more severe aspects.  That’s how Guadalcanal's Weather Coast in the Solomon Islands gained its name; unlike the island's northern coast (site of the capital Honiara), the southern Weather Coast faces the prevailing southeast trade winds and open ocean swells.  As a result, it experiences heavier rainfall, rougher seas, flooding, and generally harsher weather; it’s literally the island’s “weather-beaten coast”.

Vane was from the Middle English vane, a Southern Middle English variant of fane, from the Old English fana (cloth, banner, flag), from the Proto-West Germanic fanō, from the Proto-Germanic fanô, from the primitive Indo-European pehn- (something woven; weave; tissue; fabric; cloth).  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Foone (flag, banner), the Dutch vaan (banner, flag), the German Low German Fahn (flag) and the German Fahne.  In engineering, vanes typically exist in multiples and are relatively thin, rigid, flat, or sometimes curved surfaces radially mounted along an axis; they can be slow-moving (as on a windmill) or run at very high speeds (as in turbines).  In ornithology, the vane is the flattened, web-like part of a feather, consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft.

A captured German V2 rocket (1945, left) and a full-size clay mock up of a design proposal for 1961 Cadillac, General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, (1959, right).  When the V2 used as a weapon (1944-1945), the term used was "fins" but the rocket scientists of the 1950s popularized "vanes".  On the cars, it was always "fins" but the lower units (seen on Oldsmobiles in 1961 and Cadillacs in 1961-1962) informally were dubbed "skegs", a borrowing from nautical architecture.

A recent adoption of vane was to describe the guidance or stabilizing fins attached to the tail of bombs or missiles.  Fins had of course long been a feature of directional weapons (arrows the classic example) and they’d appeared on the earliest aerial bombs.  Had the convention been: “fins are static and vanes can move” that would have made sense to laypersons but that wasn’t the way the military-industrial complex used the labels which resulted in non-specialist writers sometimes using “fin” and “vane” interchangeably.  That was understandable because while in the terminology of aerodynamicists the words are not exactly synonymous, there’s enough overlap to encourage confusion.  As a general principle, the primary purpose of a fin is to act as a stabilizing surface enhancing stability, the tail fins on a bomb, artillery shell, rocket, or missile the classic examples; until relatively recently, almost always they were fixed.  By contrast, a vane is a thin blade-like aerodynamic surface that interacts with airflow; they may be static or movable and are used for stabilization, steering or control.  To engineers the distinction was significant and for others it made sense because the nerdier "vane" was for rocket scientists while fins were things Detroit was putting on Cadillacs.  That meant some vanes could move while others were fixed and were thus functionally equivalent to fins.  Except for historians of such things, any distinction probably isn’t important and the two are so entrenched in ordnance and aerospace nomenclature, they’re both here to stay; in modern use the only discernible definitional difference being some emphasis on the component’s shape rather than whether it moves.

Map of the US expressed as "Red", "Blue", "Bellwether" & "Swing" states.  The apparent red-blue dichotomy is a product of the voting system, the vote spread broadly similar to patterns in other two-party systems.

Electoral behaviour in the democracies of the English-speaking world is not as predictable as it was in the days of relatively stable two-party systems.  Even in the US where the Democratic and Republican party machines have ensured there’s something of an institutionalized duopoly, their internal fissiparousness of both (TEA (Taxed Enough Already) & MAGA (Make America Great Again) etc) has made the use of historic data less useful.  What does seem clear is among the “less useful” concepts in the US are the “bellwethers”, states or districts that historically were remarkably reliable in picking winners in national elections.  In presidential contests, some were striking in this: Nevada between 2012-2020 voted for the winner in every election (except 1976) and Missouri did the same between 1904- 2004 except in 1956.  Much maligned Ohio was once also a Bellwether; between choosing a loser in Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) in 1964 and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947) in 2016, Ohioans otherwise got it right.

Map of the US expressed as "Purple" states.

Political scientists explain the change by pointing out the electorate, geographically, has become much more polarized, states now increasingly sorted by education level, urbanization, ethnicity, and partisan identity.  Once consequence of this was previously competitive states can drift permanently into one party's column, thus the growing number of “Red” (Republican) and “Blue” (Democrat) states and although psephologists have published district-by-district analyses showing all states really are “shades of purple”, because of the way the electoral system works in the US, the shades don’t matter because mostly the delegates in the Electoral College are determined on “winner takes all” basis.  Thus it’s correct to speak of “red” and “blue” states and the “winner takes all” approach does distort political perceptions; were a system of proportional representation (or even a preferential system) to be adopted, the electoral outcomes would be very different on the basis of the same patterns of voting.  What this shift in behaviour has meant is political scientists tend now to focus less on the historic bellwethers and more on the “tipping-point states” (the relative handful of "swing" states which have evolved to be the most competitive and thus likely to be decisive in provides the needed Electoral College votes).  In recent elections, the tipping point states have been Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Because there are more of them, in Congressional elections, the notion of “bellwether districts” remains more useful but even there it has become diluted.  Historically, there were literally dozens of House districts that routinely elected a representative from whichever party won the national House vote and in a real (ie statistically verifiable) sense such districts really did reflected “the median American voter”, a concept now less identifiable.  What has happened is that the forces of geographic polarization, partisan realignment, residential self-sorting and the decline of split-ticket voting means the number of genuine bellwether districts dramatically has shrunk, a stark change from the trend first identified in the late 1990s of the number of “safe seats” decreasing.  Concurrent with that has been the movement in the number of House districts carried by one presidential candidate but represented by the other party in Congress.  In the 1970s and 1980s there were hundreds of such mismatches while today there are but a handful with many congressional districts effectively “safe” for one party or the other; now it’s only “reprehensible or extraordinary circumstances” (they can be local or national) likely to shift things.  While it’s true there are a small number of competitive districts (in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan) that have in recent elections been reliable bellwethers, there seems among political scientists little confidence these can be guaranteed to maintain the pattern.  The bellwethers “happened” because there was for at least decades a large “middle ground” of persuadable “swing voters” distributed throughout the country but modern American (and this predates Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) who does get blamed for much) politics increasingly is characterized by semi-stable partisan coalitions and fewer swing voters.  So, “bellwethers” are now quite likely to be temporary coincidences rather than a durable phenomenon so the predictive power of the concept is now much weaker.

1968 Holden HK Monaro GTS 327.

The In Australian federal elections, the seat most recently dubbed a “bellwether” was the NSW (New South Wales) division of Eden Monaro (established in 1900), its good burghers for four decades reliability voting for the party destined to take office.  Between 1972-2013, Eden-Monaro was won by the party winning the general election and in another quirk unusual over such a long period (and uniquely among Australia’s historic bellwethers), none of the sitting members retired, resigned or had the decency to drop dead; all were defeated on polling day.  The Monaro region lies in what was the traditional country of the Ngarigo people and “Monaro” was said to be was from the Aboriginal word maneroo, most often translated as meaning “treeless plain”, “high plain” or “high plateau” although the APH (Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia) lists the alternative etymology as an “Aboriginal word meaning 'the navel' or 'a woman's breasts'.”

Marlboro cigarette magazine advertisement, 1967.  There was a time when such imagery was thought "positive product association".

In the early years of colonial settlement, the word often was spelled “Manaro” but the pronunciation is believed always to have been me-nair-oh.  Despite that long history, when in 1968 GMH (General Motors Holdens, GM’s local operation) introduced the Monaro, the pronunciation used was mon-ah-ro and that was attributed to events far away.  The choice of name is attributed to one of GMH’s technical designers in 1967 driving through Cooma and seeing the sign “Monaro County Council”.  At the time, there had been no decision about a name for the new Holden coupé (the body style a first for the company) and what appealed to the designer was (1) the sign reminding him of the famous “Marlboro Country” cigarette advertisements (then much admired) and (2) the obvious similarity with “Camaro”, the “pony car” introduced that year by Chevrolet as a competitor for Ford’s wildly successful Mustang.  Apparently, when “Monaro” was suggested as a name, instead of a committee being formed in the usual corporate way, so things could be “discussed”, immediately the name was adopted.  Although the Camaro (pronounced kam-ah-ro) wasn’t then sold in the Australian market, it had been well-publicized so Holden taking advantage of the “linguistic association” was not surprising.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS-SS 396.

That was a decision more quickly made than the process at Chevrolet which produced Camaro which emerged from a committee after the alternatives had been considered and discarded.  These days, conjuring up novel words for products (as well as product differentiation it avoids any legal squabbles) is common but in the mid-1960s, GM must not have wanted to risk being accused of linguistic impurity so told the press there was an entry in a (very) old French-English dictionary defining camaro as “companion”. “comrade” or “friend”.  Mischievously, Ford retaliated with a more recent Spanish dictionary in which a camaro was listed as a “small shrimp-like creature”, provoking Chevrolet into responding that a camaro was “a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs”.  In the same era, that carnivorous notion really was the basis of the name of the de Tomaso Mangusta (Mongoose, 1967-1971), chosen after Alejandro de Tomaso (1928-2003) and Carroll Shelby (1923–2012) had a falling out, explained by the mongoose being a beast famous for hunting and killing cobras.  Unfortunately, the legend about the origin of the Camaro’s name is thought a myth, Chevrolet just “making it up” at a time when the company was using model names starting with “C” (Corvair, Corvette, Chevelle, Caprice) and the story of a journalist unearthing yet another dictionary that disclosed the definition “loose bowels” wholly is a myth.