Footballing

[foo t-bawl] /ˈfʊtˌbɔl/

noun
1.
a game in which two opposing teams of 11 players each defend goals at opposite ends of a field having goal posts at each end, with points being scored chiefly by carrying the ball across the opponent’s goal line and by place-kicking or drop-kicking the ball over the crossbar between the opponent’s goal posts.
Compare (def 13), (def 1), (def 6), .
2.
the ball used in this game, an inflated oval with a bladder contained in a casing usually made of leather.
3.
Chiefly British. (def 3).
4.
Chiefly British. .
5.
something sold at a reduced or special price.
6.
any person or thing treated roughly or tossed about:
They’re making a political football of this issue.
7.
(initial capital letter) U.S. Government Slang. a briefcase containing the codes and options the president would use to launch a nuclear attack, carried by a military aide and kept available to the president at all times.
verb (used with object)
8.
Informal. to offer for sale at a reduced or special price.
/ˈfʊtˌbɔːl/
noun
1.

2.
the ball used in any of these games or their variants
3.
a problem, issue, etc, that is continually passed from one group or person to another and treated as a pretext for argument instead of being resolved: he accused the government of using the strike as a political football
n.

open-air game, first recorded c.1400; see foot (n.) + ball (n.1). Forbidden in a Scottish statute of 1424. The first reference to the ball itself is late 15c. Figurative sense of “something idly kicked around” is first recorded 1530s. Ball-kicking games date back to the Roman legions, at least, but the sport seems to have risen to a national obsession in England, c.1630. Rules first regularized at Cambridge, 1848; soccer (q.v.) split off in 1863.

The U.S. style (known to some in England as “stop-start rugby with padding”) evolved gradually 19c.; the first true collegiate game is considered to have been played Nov. 6, 1869, between Princeton and Rutgers, at Rutgers, but the rules there were more like soccer. A rematch at Princeton Nov. 13, with the home team’s rules, was true U.S. football. The earliest recorded application of the word football to this is from 1881.