By Brad Hubbard | 6/28/2024
Each culture has its own vocabulary. So does each region, industry and so on. One of these categories steps out in a big way in the summer of 2024 and that is the category of sports. With the Euro, Copa America, Olympics, Tour de France, MLB, MLS, and the WNBA competing for attention, one can only swim in the ocean of terminology that would drive any English major into ecstasy faster than the sun can cook the pavement on the streets of Las Vegas.
To give a bit of a baseline, in baseball and soccer there are managers for a team while in football and basketball there are head coaches. It of course doesn’t stop there and this summer is a great opportunity to hear all of it as we have soccer tournaments on two continents and of course the Olympics.
Soccer (ok football around the world) has a lot of elegance to it. At least in the commentary. Watching the Euro or Copa America you’ll hear things like ‘the defense is being cagey,’ or that a team is ‘searching for a breakthrough.’ Giving up a goal is ‘conceding’, a smart play is being ‘clever’ and you don’t win, you get a ‘result’.
Cycling can flat make you think you are on Mars with another society allowing you to monitor their sport. Yes you have ‘attacks’ but also French words like ‘domestique.’ And if you get inspired and get on your bike, you’ll be in the ‘saddle’. When the bike breaks down it’s a ‘mechanical’ issue and if your back wheel is wobbly, your bike needs ‘truing.’
Once you hit the Olympics you are immediately throwin back into the your fourth grade math class and wonder yet again why the US is not on the metric system. Then again it is cleaner to say 400 meters vs 1312.336 feet.
Yes it is a summer of sports vocabulary and it will certainly keep even the experts on their toes. English majors will yet again rejoice at the variety and creativity while others will inevitably reach for their phones and ask Google, ‘what is a full in, back out?’
Brad Hubbard.com 