Definition of "football"

football

/ˈfʊtbɔːl/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural footballs
1. (general) A sport played on foot in which teams attempt to get a ball into a goal or zone defended by the other team.
2. (UK, uncountable) Association football: a game in which two teams each contend to get a round ball into the other team's goal primarily by kicking the ball. Known as soccer in Canada, the United States, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.
3. (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.
4. (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.
5. (Australia, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory, southern New South Wales, uncountable) Australian rules football.
6. (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.
7. (Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, uncountable) rugby league.
8. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, uncountable) rugby union.
9. (countable) The ball used in any game called "football".
10. (uncountable) Practice of these particular games, or techniques used in them.
11. (figuratively, countable) An item of discussion, particularly in a back-and-forth manner
12. (US military slang, countable) The leather briefcase containing classified nuclear war plans which is always near the US President.
  Quotations
  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.
  1994, Herbert L. Abrams, The President Has Been Shot: Confusion, Disability, and the 25th Amendment, Stanford University Press, page 126
  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.
  2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, page 155
verb
third-person singular simple present footballs, present participle footballing, simple past and past participle footballed
1. (intransitive, rare) To play football.
  Quotations
  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.
  1969, Alec Hugh Chisholm, The Joy of the Earth, page 358
  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 […]
  2019, David Randall, Suburbia: A Far from Ordinary Place