It's not just to distinguish it from rugby football. There are dozens of different types of games of football. Association football is just the one that got particularly popular across the world.

So it should be pronounced like so-ser?

I watched several documentaries over the years that said it is because at the time Football Clubs were referred to as Social Clubs and the team was just part of the Social Club. The clubs were referred to as "Socs" pronounced like the footwear Socks, and the Teams would play what was referred to a s "Soccer" as in Sock-er. Then this got exported to various people in North America, mostly from the South and West of England. Then it fell out of usage in England but no one told us over here in North America so we kept using the term.

So is it "sock-urh" or "soe'sh-ur"? The latter being like "social" but with an -er ending. Because that's how 'association' is pronounced.

Cool origin. Still an US thing if only people from the US do it.

"The origin is British so it's your fault we do it" sounds like "mom didn't educate me so it's her fault I'm a deadbeat - 40y.o. adult".

You are allowed to improve your language.

Blame the British, Oxford specifically, and their penchant to name things ending in -er

You could call them a tosser for what they've done but you'll be playing right into their hand

Charles Wredford-Brown

I think it would have been more believable if the guy had been called Sir Nigel Britishman-Worcestershiresauce

This is a joke name surely

And the fact that everyone ignores that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland also call it soccer

I just love it when Americans hear some retarded shit Britain did and then accuse all of Europe for doing it.

They also left the union. Are you gonna blame all of Europe for leaving the EU?

All of Europe - except for Britain, apparently - call it football.

Handball?

Nah. That's virtuoso shit. Most people just use one for their whole lives

No.

Them other folks need to learn themselves to talk proper.

"When you go to the pearly gates, call them 'Jod ' and see how it works out for you" was my favourite response to the gif/jif debate.

(Oddly enough Jif is an abrasive bathroom cleaner / was a lemon juice brand where I'm from (or vice versa) it was renamed to Cif to stop people from suing the companies because they added cream cleaner to their lemon meringue pie)

Good Ole shinball

I don't think so... basically that would mean every sport could/should be called "football"...

• Basketball = played on foot, not horse therefore football

• Volleyball = played on foot, not horse therefore football

• Baseball = no horse, football again

• Hockey = believe it or not, football... maybe skate ball?

I am kidding of course, it seems nobody really knows and the 2 main theories are the one you mentioned (on foot, not on horse) vs kicking of a ball with your foot (and not your hand)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology

Why do people still wear Lacoste if no one plays gatorball anymore?

Frankly, all of the different football games should get a proper name like that. Gridiron and rugby (both union and league) are both great names. You can call them gridiron football or rugby football if you want to be formal. Soccer is basically the same idea, being a shortening of association football. Now we just need counterparts for Australian and Gaelic

Precisely. It was called soccer as a joke

British imperial units and US customary units were actually both codified after American independence! Both British imperial and US customary units are derived from earlier English customary units. We made some agreements to harmonise our two systems over time so that we were at least using the same pound and yard, because we weren't before, but somehow volume units escaped this

Ironically we did sort of hamper your early efforts at metrication completely unintentionally; British pirates (privateers, more accurately) captured the French ship that happened to be carrying standards for the metric system across the Atlantic to you

Either way, Brits definitely shouldn't make fun of anyone for their system of measurement, because the only thing worse than a non-metric system is using some cursed half-and-half Frankenstein mashup of both metric and non-metric

I'm relatively confident that Lady Butterfly was not involved in either of these things you're accusing her of.

The freaking English named it soccer to distinguish from rugby football and brought that name here!

Man, Baseball with horses would be wild.

Actually I believe it’s called “Football” because most ball games were originally played on horseback.

hmmm are you sure about that? I do not know with certainty but today playing a sport with a horse would be a high demand, back in the days it would have been an even bigger one so I sincerely doubt "most ball games" were originally played on horseback when not having a horse was that much easier

That's like saying "we call them Earthmobiles because back then, most vehicles were just planes" (no way planes were common before cars)

You are sort of right regarding the origin of soccer, but it was intended to distinguish football played by the association rules vs other types of football which were popular at the time.

From Wikipedia:

Association football is part of a family of football codes that emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity. The word "association" in this term refers to the Football Association (the FA), founded in London in 1863, which published the first set of rules for the sport that same year.[8] The term was coined to distinguish the type of football played in accordance with the FA rules from other types that were gaining popularity at the time, particularly rugby football.[9] Heading from The Sportsman front page of 25 November 1910, illustrating the continued use of the word "football" to encompass both rugby and association football.

The term soccer comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelt assoccer (a shortening of "association"), it was later reduced to the modern spelling.[10][11] Early alternative spellings included socca and socker.[9] This form of slang also gave rise to rugger for rugby football, fiver and tenner for five pound and ten pound notes, and the now-archaic footer that was also a name for association football.[12]

Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called simply "football" in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland,[13] whereas people usually call it "soccer" in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia,[14] Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster),[15] and the United States. A notable exception is New Zealand, where in the first two decades of the 21st century, under the influence of international television, "football" has been gaining prevalence, despite the dominance of other codes of football, namely rugby union and rugby league.[16]

It's not a sphere, therefore it's not a ball. It's shaped like more like an egg.

You kick it once with your foot, then you carry it with your hand.

It's not football, its HANDEGG.