Comment on !football@sopuli.xyz , for football fans (the one where you touch ball wit your foot)

• AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)

  It’s been around for almost a millennia.

  And I’m not proposing a new standard, I’m continuing use of a standard introduced by working class Brits in the early 20th century, so that xkcd really doesn’t apply at all.

  It means something specific TODAY. You’re suggesting to have it mean something new and different. It doesn’t matter if that meaning was used a century ago, that’s not what the comic is referencing.

  source

  • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If football refers to a single, specific, concrete sport, why do we use it to refer to Canadian rules football AND Gaelic rules football AND American football AND association football?

    source

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      we use it to refer to Canadian rules football AND Gaelic rules football AND American football

      ‘we’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, considering that’s like 5% of the world population that would refer to it that way.

      source

      • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Maybe in terms of active vocabulary, but in terms of passive vocabulary ~100% of English speakers will recognize the ambiguity

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