LONDON: As the United States and Canada co-host the 2026 World Cup, millions of fans have noticed a peculiar linguistic divide: while most of the world calls it football, Americans and Canadians call it soccer.
The word, it turns out, is not an American invention but an English one, coined by Oxford University students in the 1880s.
At the time, two similar sports were gaining popularity: rugby football and association football. Wealthy university students had a habit of shortening words and adding “-er” to create slang. Rugby became “rugger”. Association became “soccer” — taken from the “soc” in the middle of the word.
“When I was a child in England, the word ‘soccer’ was perfectly acceptable,” said Stefan Szymanski, emeritus professor at the University of Michigan, who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
The term travelled to other continents alongside the sport itself. In the United States, “football” already referred to American football, which evolved from rugby. Soccer became the natural name for the association variety.
British newspapers continued using “soccer” well into the 1980s, according to Szymanski’s research. Only later did “football” become the dominant term in the UK.
Today, the word remains common in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.
Szymanski said his American students often apologise for using the word soccer, worried that British people might be sensitive about it.
“And they’re right — some are,” he said. “I think it’s very polite of them to apologise, but I tell them: ‘It’s an English word — feel free to use it.'”
