# What's the etymology of "soccer" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 30, 2014, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043 "2014-06-30T23:00:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2014, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/1 "2014-06-30T23:00:54Z")
I’m absolutely loving the World Cup. But I’m an American, and we call this sport “soccer”. We have our own brand of “football”, but the two are very, very different games. I know, I know, but please don’t claim one is the better of the two in your responses. In short, it’s in the title. Where did the word “soccer” come from in the American vernacular? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/2 "2014-06-30T23:05:27Z")
“soc” is short for “asSOCiation”. The specific type of football that soccer is is “Association Football” (as opposed to the version of the game that grew into American Football, which was “Rugby Football”). ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2014, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/3 "2014-06-30T23:06:24Z")
From the UK, where it was an abbreviation for Association football. Association\>assoc.\> sockie\>socker\>soccer. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2014, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/4 "2014-06-30T23:08:01Z")
Apparently ‘soccer’ predates ‘football’ by 18 years or so. Soccer was the posh boys name for the sport, while the working classes came to call it football. > **[The Origin of the Word “Soccer”](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/the-origin-of-the-word-soccer/)** > > Today I found out the origin of the word “soccer”.  For all you out there who love to complain when Americans, and certain others, call “Football”, “Soccer”, you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of... ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2014, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/5 "2014-06-30T23:28:49Z")
Thanks, all. Especially **bob++** for the link. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/6 "2014-07-01T02:13:49Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Apparently ‘soccer’ predates ‘football’ by 18 years or so. The idea of counting years is not making sense to me , of course there was _football_ BEFORE “The Association” ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/7 "2014-07-01T02:28:38Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Apparently ‘soccer’ predates ‘football’ by 18 years or so. Soccer was the posh boys name for the sport, while the working classes came to call it football. > > [The Origin of the Word “Soccer”](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/the-origin-of-the-word-soccer/) This, of course, is nonsense. “Football” was used to denote association football in the name of the Football Association, founded in 1863. “Soccer” could only have come into use after the foundation of the Football Association. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/8 "2014-07-01T02:54:07Z")
The word “football” goes back to at least the fifteenth century in England. It refers to any ball game which includes kicking, and in which two teams strive to get a ball into one of the goals located at opposite ends of a field. It’s only in the nineteenth century that people attempt to codify standard rules of football. This becomes necessary once transport technology evolves to a point where people can travel to play football, and competitions which are not purely local become possible. The English public schools are at the forefront here, attempting to standardise rules so that inter-school football matches can be played. Rugby football is the oldest of the now-standard codes, followed by Australian Rules, Association football, American football, Gaelic football and Rugby League in more or less that order. (Though, since the standardisation of codes was a process more than an event, and all the codes have continued to develop right down to the present, we can’t be _too_ dogmatic about the order in which the codes emerged). In regions where one code dominates, “football”, with no qualification, normally refers to that code. I suspect what the “18 years” claim mentined in post #4 is really saying is that it took about that long from the foundation of the Football Association for the code which it regulated to become so dominant in England that it started to be called simply “football”. ---
**Author:** ![Ornery\_Bob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/da6949/32.png) [@Ornery\_Bob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ornery_Bob)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/9 "2014-07-01T03:02:52Z")
There were lots of games called football with lots of different rules. The point is that it was the rules formalized by the Football Association that first denoted a _particular_ football game and the name of that game wasn’t just simply football, it was Association Football. So the “first name” of that particular game was Association Football (not simply football) which became soccer and only later was referred to by the single word “football.” ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/10 "2014-07-01T03:22:37Z")
> [@Ornery\_Bob](#): > > There were lots of games called football with lots of different rules. The point is that it was the rules formalized by the Football Association that first denoted a _particular_ football game and the name of that game wasn’t just simply football, it was Association Football. So the “first name” of that particular game was Association Football (not simply football) which became soccer and only later was referred to by the single word “football.” Nitpick: The FA code wasn’t the first. The Rugby code is older, as is Australian rules, and there were still other codes which no longer survive - Cambridge rules, Sheffield rules - because there were subsumed into the surviving codes. Rugy is also the first code in which international games were played. Association football became simply “football” in England not because it was the first code, but because it came to be the dominant code. The other codes were largely played by relatively monied men who had the time to play and the wealth to travel, but when the working classes took up football (and football fandom) it was the FA code that they embraced. And so soccer became simply “football” in England and in Scotland. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/11 "2014-07-01T04:06:29Z")
What I’m hearing here is that the word “soccer” is a Britishism for “association”, akin to “apples and pears” for “flight of stairs”. Is that correct? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/12 "2014-07-01T04:20:07Z")
Well, “apples and pears” is cockney rhyming slang and soccer is not, it’s just a shortening of association with the appending of the jocular schoolboy suffix -er. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/13 "2014-07-01T05:26:55Z")
> [@armedmonkey](#): > > What I’m hearing here is that the word “soccer” is a Britishism for “association”, akin to “apples and pears” for “flight of stairs”. Is that correct? What Inner Stickler said. Plus, “soccer” isn’t a general abbreviation for “association”; it refers specifically to association football. And it represents an abbreviation convention that was common in English schools in the nineteenth century; take the first stressed syllable of the word to be abbreviated, and add the suffix “-er”. The abbreviation “rugger” (for rugby football) is another example which is still current. But you also have “footer” (football of unspecified code), “brekker” (breakfast), “fiver” and “tenner” for five-pound and ten-pound notes, and more besides. Most of them would now seem pretty dated. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/14 "2014-07-01T15:46:59Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > What Inner Stickler said. Plus, “soccer” isn’t a general abbreviation for “association”; it refers specifically to association football. And it represents an abbreviation convention that was common in English schools in the nineteenth century; take the first stressed syllable of the word to be abbreviated, and add the suffix “-er”. The abbreviation “rugger” (for rugby football) is another example which is still current. But you also have “footer” (football of unspecified code), “brekker” (breakfast), “fiver” and “tenner” for five-pound and ten-pound notes, and more besides. Most of them would now seem pretty dated. I know soccer does come from “association”, but I’ve always thought it’s a bit strange. Alll those other examples keep the pronunciation of the stressed syllable, but “soccer” is purely a “spelling pronunciation”. “Association” doesn’t have a “soc” sound in it at all. Shouldn’t it be “sosher”? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/15 "2014-07-01T16:02:48Z")
It’s a good question. I don’t know for a fact, but I note the earliest quote for soccer in the online OED is “1889 E. Dowson Let. 21 Feb. (1967) 38, I absolutely decline to see socca’ matches.” If the movement, at least in print was from Association football to assoc. football, then I could see how an english speaker, unthinkingly applying standard phonological rules, might swap the ‘soft’ sound for the ‘hard’. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/16 "2014-07-01T16:46:39Z")
[Google Ngram](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=soccer&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csoccer%3B%2Cc0) seems to indicate that “soccer” has been used increasingly since around 1910. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/17 "2014-07-01T16:57:50Z")
See the wiki article on the Oxford “-er” for more examples of words formed in this way: > **[Oxford "-er"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_%22-er%22)** > > The Oxford "-er", or often "-ers", is a colloquial and sometimes facetious suffix prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875, which is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. The term was defined by the lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (several editions 1937–61). > The "-er" gave rise to such words as rugger and the now archaic footer for Rugby football, while soccer was used for association football. Togger was widely u... ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/18 "2014-07-01T17:12:22Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Well, “apples and pears” is cockney rhyming slang and soccer is not, it’s just a shortening of association with the appending of the jocular schoolboy suffix -er. I knew it was a bad comparison right after I posted it. What I was getting at about “Britishism” is I’m trying to clarify that the word “soccer” isn’t really American. It’s British slang. The British slang then became American vernacular but was also dropped by the Brits themselves. Is that correct? Language is weird. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/19 "2014-07-01T17:18:08Z")
I suppose it seems weird now but if you follow the route back, it makes sense. When America was introduced to the sport, everyone called it soccer, so that’s what americans called it. Over time the UK moved to calling it football but since the general american populace is not necessarily keyed into the general british populace, that linguistic shift didn’t cross the atlantic. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043/20 "2014-07-01T17:46:24Z")
Except everyone in Britain didn’t call it soccer first. It was always called football, and then the rules were agreed upon by the football association, and then the slang term soccer appeared. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-etymology-of-soccer/692043.md?page=2)