20 football-related words and phrases that are easy to make mistakes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Every fan should know.

1. FIFA World Cup - 2018

All words in the phrase "World Cup", if it is not at the beginning of the sentence, are written with a lowercase letter, and the number is separated from it by an em dash. The phrases "national team" and "world champion" obey the same rule. It is not necessary to write them with a capital letter even out of great joy or in a fit of patriotism.

This spelling is fixed in the spelling dictionary of Lopatin, Nechaeva and Cheltsova "Uppercase or lowercase?"

2. 2018 FIFA World Cup Cup

This phrase, on the other hand, is capitalized, as is always the case when the word "cup" comes first in the name of a sporting event. But everything will change if it moves to other positions: "Intercontinental Cup" will be spelled that way.

3. "Coaches", not "trainers"

Before you scold coaches with the last words, remember how to call them correctly. The modern literary norm suggests that in the plural the word "trainer" sounds like "trainers".

4. "Offside", not "offside"

Such a literary norm is explained by tradition: when a word is borrowed from a foreign language, double consonants are transformed into one. For example, it happened with a blogger, offline, office. Offside is no exception.

5. "Appeal", not "appeal"

There are plenty of reasons to appeal in football. You can challenge the decisions of the anti-doping committee before the tournament or the referee right in the process. What you can't do is double the "n" in this word.

6. "Disqualification", not "disqualification"

If the athlete "played out", he will be disqualified. Everything is simple here: the prefix "diz" is written before the vowels, "dis" - before the consonants.

7. Derby, not Derby

Frankly speaking, the word "derby" will hardly be useful to you in a conversation about the World Cup, as it means a fight between teams from the same city or region. But if you decide to delve deeper into the career of a player, write "derby" with an "e".

8. "Boots", not "boots"

The spiked boot is on a par with less brutal shoes, sneakers, sandals and sandals. She is feminine.

9. Playoffs

In Russian, the word playoff not only retained a double consonant, but also acquired a hyphen. No explanation has been found for this. Therefore, you just have to remember that a series of elimination games is described in one word that way.

10. "Arbiter", not "Orbiter"

While some judges are stars in their profession, they have no orbits. And the name does not come from this word, but from the Latin arbiter - "observer".

11. "Referee", not "Referee"

If you are tempted to call the judge by a borrowed word, pay attention to this option as well. In the "referee" there is no letter "e", which is heard in conversation.

12. "Mundial", not "Mundial"

For those who strive for brevity, there is a synonym for the phrase "World Cup", and this is quite a decent word "mundial". It began to be used after the 1982 World Cup, which was held in Spain. Mundial translates from Spanish as "worldwide".

13. "Own goal", not "Auto goal"

"Auto …" is always spelled together as the first part of compound words. Putting a space or a hyphen after it is as unforgivable as an own goal.

14. "Counterattack", not "counter-attack"

The first part of the complex words "counter …" in the overwhelming majority of cases is written together. Of the commonly used words, the only exception is Rear Admiral.

15. "Draw", not "draw"

This word comes from the word "lot", and not from "stallion", so some, in a fit of intellectuality, are drawn to remove the "extra" letter. However, its presence is easy to explain: centuries earlier, the word “lot” looked like “colt”. In addition, the word "draw" is much easier to pronounce without breaking the tongue.

16. "Draw", not "nobody's"

An equal score at the end of the game is denoted by the word "draw". In this case, the match ends in a draw, and the opponents bring the fight to a draw. In general, there are so many nuances in the spelling of the word that it would be better if someone still won in every match.

17. Midfielder

In English, a midfielder, a mid-line player is called half back. In Russian, "f" was transformed into "v". And in the second part, the letter "e" has been preserved, because the borrowing is old. In words adopted later, "e" appears more often. For example, in "flashback" and "hatchback".

18. Outside, Not Outside

Don't let the hyphen slip into this word. It is written in one piece both in Russian and in English. It is also important to remember that although this striker is an extreme, it is also wrong to call him an outsider.

19. "Win", not "Win"

If you are optimistic about the World Cup, remember that there is nowhere to come from after the prefix in this word. So let the team win with dignity, and not win dubiously.

20. "Rise to the Ground", not "Rise to the Ground"

This phrase will be useful to you after the World Cup, so it is worth understanding the difference: to level - to make something equal, to level - to make something equal. The phraseologism “raze to the ground” presumably dates back to the period when the enemies destroyed the city to the ground, that is, a level place remained on the site of the settlement.

In many sources, the erroneous version is found as the correct one, but do not be fooled: in the "Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Literary Language" edited by Fedorov, the option "raze to the ground" is fixed. And, of course, this refers to the soil, not the planet, so "earth" is written with a lowercase letter.