The association between football & soccer

On The Long View this morning one of the contributors mentioned how admirably short were the minutes of meetings of the football authorities in the C19th.

In the earliest days one reason for this would have been that all the copies had to be written out by clerks by hand, using old fashioned pen & ink.

There was naturally a tendency to use abbreviation where possible –modern youngsters did not invent the technique with their texts & emails. Long words, frequently repeated, developed their own standard shorthand.

And so Association became Assoc

Say it quickly, over & over, & you get soccer.

So many of the usages which we deride as Americanisms in fact began in England.

Links
The Long View of Football
The Football Association: founded 1863

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