15 football phrases have been added to the OED, but some questions remain... 📖 What took them so long to add 'Panenka' and 'row Z'? 🧑🌾 When will 'farmers league' and '50p head' be added? 𝑰𝒕 𝑰𝒔 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰𝒕 𝑰𝒔: The FootballCliches column
Welcome to the latest instalment of It Is What It Is, the sister column to Adam Hurrey’s
, a parallel mission into the heart of the tiny things in football you never thought really mattered… until you were offered a closer look.There are some cast-iron guarantees in the annual UK news cycle, the hardy slow-news-day perennials that keep the wheel turning.
See also: some words that will infuriate your parents, let alone your grandparents, have made their way into the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED’s latest quarterly release of new entries include “damfino”, “side hustle”, “jabbed” and — what year is it again? — “influencer”. Clearly, any emerging vocabulary has to prove itself in our language before the principal record of English words formalises its rise: can “galdem” and “mandem” do it on a cold, wet Tuesday night at the Philological Society? It seems so. And now — just six convenient weeks before theAt first glance, this is not an adventurous, cutting-edge dip into the modern footballing lexicon.