football

noun

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

   “Roman and medieval football matches were more violent than any modern type of football.”

2. (countable)The ball used in any game called "football".

   “The player kicked the football.”

   “Hans Moleman Production presents: Man getting hit by football.”

   “The league said the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots used footballs that didn’t meet league specifications in the first half of the AFC championship game last Sunday.”

   ““The coroner and the pathologist described how badly damaged my dad’s brain was,” his daughter Dawn told CNN in 2019. “He found that there was considerable evidence of trauma to the brain which he said was similar to the brain of the boxer. And he said that the main candidate for the trauma was heading the footballs.”

3. (Africa, Caribbean, South-Asia, UK, uncountable)Association football, also called soccer: a game in which two teams each contend to get a round ball into the other team's goal primarily by kicking the ball.

   “Each team scored three goals when they played football.”

   ““Our research has shown that heading is rare in youth football matches, so this guidance is a responsible development to our grassroots coaching without impacting the enjoyment that children of all ages take from playing the game.””

4. (US, uncountable)American football: a game played on a field 100 yards long and 53 1/3 yards wide in which two teams of 11 players attempt to get an ovoid ball to the end of each other's territory.

   “Each team scored two touchdowns when they played football.”

   “According to Newsday, he took the ball to his team’s equipment staff, which then informed head coach Chuck Pagano, who told general manager Ryan Grigson, who told NFL director of football operations Mike Kensil, who told the officials on the field.”

5. (Canada, uncountable)Canadian football: a game played on a field 110 yards long and 65 yards wide in which two teams of 12 players attempt to get an ovoid ball to the end of each other's territory.

   “They played football in the snow.”

6. (Australia, New-South-Wales, South, Southern, Tasmania, Western, uncountable)Australian rules football.

   “The weekend after AFL football chief Simon Lethlean made it clear players who jumper punched or punched opponents in the stomach would most likely be suspended, Jones was charged with striking Hawthorn’s Luke Breust.”

7. (Ireland, uncountable)Gaelic football: a field game played with similar rules to hurling, but using hands and feet rather than a stick, and a ball, similar to, yet smaller than a soccer ball.
8. (Australia, New-Zealand, countable, uncountable)Any form of rugby.

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

9. (Australia, New-South-Wales, New-Zealand, uncountable)Any form of rugby.
10. (Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, uncountable)Any form of rugby.
11. (uncountable)Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.

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

    “Sloppy football continued after the first break, as the more composed Brunswick controlled the play by relying on the throw-pass: forty times to Williamstown's twenty-eight.”

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

    “That budget item became a political football.”

13. (US, countable, slang)The leather briefcase containing classified nuclear war plans which is always near the US President.

    “The aide rides, along with the president's physician, in the “control car,” third in line in the motorcade. He is responsible for the football (or “black box” or “black bag”), a briefcase containing the codes and targeting information the president would require to order or authorize a nuclear attack.”

    “After the lunch broke, we walked to the Trump-Putin press conference, which started about 6 p.m. As Kelly observed to me at some point, there were now two military aides in the room, each carrying his country's nuclear football.”

    “It came in the shape of the White House military office Marine Corps aide who got off the president’s helicopter with him in Davos holding the “football”, the black briefcase carrying the codes for launching the 900 nuclear weapons the US has on alert at all times. It is the constant antidote to any temptation to laugh at Trump’s rants or gaffes.”

verb

1. (intransitive, rare)To play football.

   “It was an announcement of the outbreak of what is now termed World War I. Some of us lads were footballing when we heard the news. It left us bewildered.”

   “You walked up our road, passed the elms that bordered our park until Dutch disease killed them in the early 1970s, diagonally crossed its field where we footballed, turned right at the drinking fountain and cattle trough […]”