Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Robin
I love reminding them that the word "soccer" was coined in the UK.
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Very many words common in the USA are simply ones that have fallen out of use in England. There are also still words in Ireland and Northern Ireland now out of use in England, from Norman and Elizabethan times. Scotland also has extra words and about 3 regions.
Maybe Irish and Scottish readers have less difficulty with some US texts than English readers (place rather than language).
I have a friend who is only into Rugby. That well known kind is actually Rugby Union Football. The other kind is Rugby League Football, which in Yorkshire is called football. The objection to calling football, soccer, is a particular class of football fan that in UK and Ireland that makes Sky TV rich.
Rugby here in Munster is as big, or maybe bigger in some places, than the Gaelic football, which I played once and don't understand. To me it seems a bit like rugby with a round ball. The other big one here is Hurling (Camogie if girls play it). It's been described as ice-hockey played on grass. Many Northern Ireland Catholic Girls Schools play camogie* and hockey and strike terror into the girls hockey teams from the other schools**.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
That mentions Australian Rules Football, which is similar to Gaelic.
So to me soccer makes more sense as there are five well known games with football in the name apart from soccer. But it's true if you say football (outside Yorkshire) in UK & Ireland people assume soccer or even just Sky enriching Premier League. Rupert Murdock was Australian and bought US citizenship so as to own US media. He's practically destroyed football (soccer).
The legendary Cú Chulainn means Culain's Hound, because as Setanta he killed the actual guard dog with a slitter (the ball in Hurling, which is a bit like a cricket ball, very hard!) playing hurling (maybe 2,500 years ago). However the current Gaelic sports are mostly 19th C. The original Gaelic football might have used a dried brain, in a bag, off a dead hero, c.f. Welsh legend of Bran and his head later buried in London.
[* Lacrosse started in North America and is now in posh UK schools. No connection to hockey and certainly not
camogie.]
[** According to an ex-hockey player I know well]
Edit:
I forgot Shinty, which is like Hurling, and even has a version played on ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinty