Apparently, in English-speaking places outside North America, American football is sometimes jokingly called handegg or hand-egg, a jab at a sport named football even though the ball is carried and shaped more like an egg. The contrast is with the other kind of football, what people in the US usually call soccer. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Handegg” Is a Joking Name for American Football”
I don’t follow sports very well, but I like a new word I heard.
Apparently, in the English-speaking world that isn’t North America, they sometimes jokingly call American football hand-egg.
Hand-egg?
Yeah, it’s a joke, because they have their own football, which is our soccer, and they don’t like calling our football football, because it’s very unlike their sport.
So they jokingly call it hand-egg.
Hand-egg because of the shape.
That’s right.
You hold it in your hand.
It doesn’t involve your foot.
And it doesn’t look like a ball.
It looks like an egg.
It’s a hand-egg.
I like that.
Hand-egg.
American hand-egg.
The NHL.
No, that won’t work.
The NHEL.
Yeah, there we go.
The National Hand Egg League.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
