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Although football-type games have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is often said to have begun in 1863, when England\u2019s newly formed Football Association wrote down a set of rules. At the time, it was the most widely played game of its kind in the country, but it wasn\u2019t the only one. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school, was a variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal. The game played under the Football Association\u2019s rules thus became known as association football.<\/span><\/p>\n Because the sport originated in England, it is often assumed that soccer is an Americanism. In fact, the word is thoroughly British in origin. So why is it that Americans (not to mention Canadians, Australians, and others) are likelier to use the word than Brits are? The answer lies in how the sport developed in each country.<\/p>\n Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of \u201crugger\u201d (rugby football) and \u201cassoccer\u201d (association football). The latter term was further shortened to \u201csoccer\u201d (sometimes spelled \u201csocker\u201d), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, \u201csoccer\u201d never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain. By the 20th century, rugby football was more commonly called rugby, while association football had earned the right to be known as just plain football.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the United States, a sport emerged in the late 19th century that borrowed elements of both rugby and association football. Before long, it had proved more popular than either of them. In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word. As a result, American association-football players increasingly adopted soccer to refer to their sport. The United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association in 1945, and it later dispensed with the \u201cFootball\u201d altogether. No longer just a nickname, soccer had stuck.<\/p>\n Other countries where the word soccer is common include those that, like the United States, have competing forms of football. For instance, Canada has its own version of gridiron football; Ireland is home to Gaelic football; and Australia is mad about Australian rules football (which is derived from rugby). In places where football can be ambiguous, soccer is usefully precise.<\/p>\n Content created and supplied by: GreatAlexander (via Opera \n , . , . () , , , , , , , , . \/ , and\/or . , , and\/or , and\/or <\/span>
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