As you watch the 2014 FIFA World Cup over the next few weeks, you'll hear a lot of people call the sport "football."
未來幾周觀看世界杯的時候，你會聽到很多人管足球叫"
If you're American, however, there's a good chance you call it "soccer." And despite what British fans may tell you, there's a good reason you call it that. They should know — soccer is a British word.
但如果你是美國人，很可能你管它叫"soccer"。
The word "soccer" dates back to the 19th-century birth of modern football. It has a more precise meaning than the broader term "football," points out University of Michigan professor Stefan Szymanski in a new paper.
"soccer"這個詞可以追溯到19世紀，
People have been playing football-like sports for centuries, from the ancient Chinese cuju (pictured above) to the Mayan game pok ta pok, which used a rubber ball. Yet football as it's played in the World Cup was born more recently in Britain.
從中國古代的蹴鞠（見上圖）到瑪雅的橡膠足球“波塔波”，
Some types of football had long involved use of the hands — "football" originally meant an array of ball games played on foot rather than horseback, and didn't necessarily refer to kicking. In 1871, a group of clubs met in London to form the Rugby Football Union, and from then on the two versions of football were distinguished as Rugby Football and Association Football. The latter is a mouthful, especially compared to "rugby," so it clearly needed a nickname.
football一詞最初是指在地上而非馬背上進行的球類運動。
But how did "association" become "soccer"? For one, it was common at the time in England to form slang by adding -er, like "rugger" from Rugby. Plus, as the Online Etymology Dictionary points out, "those who did it perhaps shied away from making a name out of the first three letters of Assoc."
但"association" 是如何演變成"soccer"的？一來在當時的英語中通過添加-
The popularity of football in North America required another name for association football, so Americans used the British nickname "soccer." This was still a recognized term at the time in England. The word “soccer” wasn't used widely in publications until after World War II. It then peaked in popularity among the British from 1960 to 1980, when soccer and football were used almost interchangeably.
在北美，由於美式橄欖球的盛行，
Although it's unclear why "soccer" grew more common in Britain after World War II, it may have been due to the popularity of U.S. soldiers stationed there.
我們尚不清楚為何二戰後"soccer"一詞在英國變得更普遍，
In the 1980s we start to hear the argument that soccer is an American word. It is hard to think of any explanation for the decline of "soccer" in England other than the rising popularity of the word soccer in the U.S.
從80年代開始，我們開始聽說說法認為"soccer"一詞是美
