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by m0nty 2142 days ago
I wondered about that 'soccer' thing as well. It was always perfectly good English when I was growing up, and at school we used it to distinguish the game from rugby.

The origin myth I heard was along the lines of 'I don't want to play rugger, but I do fancy a game of assoc-er' where it was an attempted play on words with 'association football' by someone at an independent school. I doubt the truth of this, but anyway...

1 comments

Not a play on words. Soccer's etymology exactly comes from as"soc"iation football.

Wiki's wording is a little confusing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology), but I believe they're saying that soccer comes from association football, but crediting that term to Charles Wreford-Brown can't be substantiated.