Soccer, Football and Rugby

American football season is in full power, but the world's football is America's soccer. But soccer as the name for what the world knows as football is not an Americanism. The "soccer" term is actually an English export, just like the sport.

"Soccer" was a colloquial term used in England well into the 20th century and rose in popularity following World War II. But it fell out of favor in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, the term is used outside the U.S. mostly in an American context, such as when referring to leagues like Major League Soccer (MLS). The term "soccer" is also used in countries that have their own competing version of American style football, such as Canada, and Australia.

In England in the early 1800s, a version of the sport of football was played based on a game played by “commoners" in the Middle Ages. It found its way into some of England's privileged schools. A set of standard rules was drafted by students in Cambridge in 1848 and were further developed by the Football Association in 1863.

A variation was established in 1871 with the founding of the Rugby Football Union using Rugby School (where the game was first played) rules from the 1830s that allowed a player to run with the ball in their hands. Rugby football, or rugger, separated itself from association football, the traditional feet-only version of the sport.

Association football would get the nickname assoccer, leading eventually to just soccer. The addition of an "er" at the end of a word was something of a trend at the time, which is why we get the awkward transformation of association into assoccer and soccer.

The first recorded American football game was between the colleges of Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 and used unique rules derived from those in both association and rugby football.

Simply called "football" in the U.S., elsewhere it would become known as gridiron football or American football, much in the way Gaelic football and Australian football have their own distinctions.

The world ended up with two footballs, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Neither side would give up the name, so Americans started referring to England's football by the previous nickname, soccer.

Skype

Skype was developed from the idea that we would be using "video phones" - an idea that has been floating around in sci-fi since the 1950s.

When it became a reality, it was expensive and limited.  Skype took advantage of the growing ubiquity of webcams to bring the idea to the masses.

Skype is a peer-to-peer communication technology, meaning one person connects to another person. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark.

The name for the software is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper." Unfortunately, some of the domain names associated with "Skyper" were already taken, so the company dropped the "r" for Skype.

Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications in 2011 for US $8.5 billion.

Humor and Humors

Humour (British English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. But this funny version of the word comes from what was once a very serious term in ancient medicine.

The ancient Greeks taught that the balance of four fluids/humours in the human body controlled human health and emotion.

In Latin, humor meant a "body fluid."

The blood was believed to be produced exclusively by the liver.

BILE = a bitter, alkaline, brownish-yellow or greenish-yellow fluid that is secreted by the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and discharged into the duodenum and aids in the emulsification, digestion, and absorption of fats - from Latin bilis "fluid secreted by the liver" (also known as choler),

Excess of yellow bile was thought to produce aggression, and reciprocally excess anger to cause liver derangement and imbalances in the humors.

The Middle English melancholie comes from the Late Latin melancholia and earlier from Greek melancholía meaning the condition of having black bile. An excess of black bile was understood to cause depression, and inversely a decline of feeling or opinion cause the liver to produce blood contaminated with black bile.

Phlegm was thought to be associated with apathetic behavior, as preserved in the word "phlegmatic." In Middle English it was fleem  and in Middle French flemme both from Late Latin phlegma via Greek phlégma meaning "flame" equivalent to phlég(ein) to burn + -ma.