The post-match interview is the graveyard of good grammar. Olympic athletes say they are desperate “to medal” or “to podium”. Football managers are asked whether they have “lost the dressing room” (have they looked in the last place they saw it?).
You can’t escape sporting platitudes in everyday life, either. British MPs score “political own-goals”, such as snogging a colleague on camera. Bleary-eyed workers are asked to “take one for the team”. Your dull workday is “a game of two halves” during which you should never, in any circumstances, “drop the ball”. Daily meetings become “scrums”, projects are broken down into “sprints”, during which managers implore you to “give it 110%” (even if someone throws you a “curveball”).
In every country sporting slang has spilled over into other areas of life. Politicians and corporate bigwigs, like football managers, use clichés for good reason: the same euphemisms that hide or excuse poor performance on the pitch can obscure or justify job cuts or unpopular policies. Want to stop them getting away with it? Time to tee yourself up for success, get the ball rolling and learn some sporting lingo.
幻のオリンピック (maboroshi no orinpikku)
1. Phantom Olympics (noun)
2. A cancelled Olympics
Olympicbusters
For the first time in recent history, the Olympics – slated to take over Tokyo last summer – were postponed, because of covid-19. With the pandemic still raging, some Japanese, fearing the worst, started referring to a chilling apparition: the maboroshi no orinpikku (“phantom Olympics”).
This spectre has haunted Japan before. In 1940 the Olympics in Tokyo were abandoned after the second world war broke out. That was the first time locals used the term phantom Olympics. Japanese are now pointing out the parallels: in 1940 the games would have given Japan a podium for nationalist chest-thumping; the 2020 games are meant to showcase Japan’s re-emergence from decades of stagnation.
Many Japanese reckon a second phantom Olympics is shouganai – “it cannot be helped”. They worry that the games will be a super-spreading event, particularly because less than a fifth of Japan’s population is fully vaccinated. Officials have made a spirited defence of the games, repeating an occult-like incantation that the event will be “safe and secure”. Suga Yoshihide, the prime minister, says the Olympics will prove “that humanity has defeated the virus”. The government refuses to be spooked.
Miki Kobayashi
“Leave it all on the field”
To put all of one’s energy into an endeavour (idiom)
Are you giving it 110%?
Patrick Mahomes II, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, is not often likened to Barack Obama, but the pair have a shared love of clichés. When Mahomes’s American-football team lost the Super Bowl in April, he lamented: “All you can do is leave everything on the field”. His oratory echoed that of the former president, who vowed to do the same in office.
“Leave it all on the field”, a platitude that means making the maximum possible effort, has made it into stump-speeches and office pep talks. British bosses tell workers to “cover every blade of grass”, a cliché beloved of Premier League football managers.
These days an office grunt is expected to show all the dedication of an elite athlete in their mundane job. But what works on the field doesn’t always make sense in the corporate world – Wembley is not a WeWork. In a recent study, more than half of American workers say their jobs make them feel burned out. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to leave it all on their desks.
Bo Franklin
পোঁদে কাঁটাতারের দাগ (pnodey kaanta-taarer daag)
1. Barbed-wire-pocked buttocks (noun)
2. A fan of SC (Sporting Club) East Bengal
3. A refugee
Down to the wire
In 1905 Bengal was cleaved in two by its colonial rulers. The region was split even more deeply in 1947, when West Bengal remained in newly independent India and east Bengal became East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh). This divide fostered a mythic footballing rivalry – SC (Sporting Club) East Bengal are sworn enemies of Mohun Bagan A. C. (Athletic Club), from the west. They clash every year in the Kolkata Derby, or as supporters call it, boro khela – “the big game”.
Fans have invented slurs to slight their foes. Mohun Bagan supporters taunt those from the “other side” with the insult pnodey kaanta-taarer daag, having barbed-wire-pocked buttocks, a reference to climbing over the border fence. Violent riots consumed east Bengal in the mid-20th century and many people fled west, hence the jibe. The phrase describes East Bengal supporters and, pejoratively, refugees.
The insult has recently been reclaimed by East Bengal fans. They now use it themselves to show pride in their heritage and challenge anti-immigrant sentiment in India. When their arch-rivals chant pnodey kaanta-taarer daag, it no longer sounds like a taunt, but a cheer.
Sudipto Sanyal
Shithousery
Devious conduct to gain a sporting advantage (noun)
Foul play
“You have to respect the shithousery of Pepe,” wrote one Twitter user in June, referring to a Portuguese defender playing in the Euro 2020 football tournament. Pepe is best known for dishing out regular on-pitch headbutts. Players like him now have a moniker – they are “shithouses” – and their trade of “shithousery” involves all manner of dodgy play, from bone-splitting tackles to theatrical dive-and-scream routines.
The term has its roots in 16th-century Britain: people went to empty their bowels in public shithouses. By the 1950s the expression was used to describe any unpleasant place or person, and then crossed over to stadiums, becoming a favourite phrase among football fans.
As the term has evolved, the connotations have changed. Unsportsmanlike behaviour was once considered despicable in any form. Today it can be an art. A player who runs down the clock by hamming up an injury often gets a free pass from some fans (as long as their team wins). Many supporters, however, just want footballers to cut the crap.
Avantika Chilkoti
Jugaron como nunca, perdieron como siempre
1. They played like never before, they lost as usual (idiom)
2. A sports team that plays well, but not well enough
So close, yet so far
Many football fanatics in Latin America are blessed: Brazil has won five World Cups, Argentina holds two. Mexicans are not so lucky. More than 120m potential cracks (“amazing footballer players”) live in the country, yet its national football team has never won a World Cup. Fans sum up this failure with the phrase jugaron como nunca, perdieron como siempre: “They played like never before, they lost as usual”. Though the team looks promising and tries hard, it always misses the goal.
The expression was popular during the World Cup in 2018, when Mexico beat Germany, the defending champions. Fans in Mexico City jumped with such joy that they caused a man-made earthquake. The team was promptly knocked out by Brazil. Another term emerged: el quinto partido, the fifth match (quarter-final), which Mexico hasn’t reached since 1986.
This summer footballers could restore some national pride. Mexico’s Olympic team won gold in 2012 and could do so again in Tokyo. Victory would prepare them for the more prestigious World Cup next year – so long as they keep their eyes on the ball.
Margaret Kadifa
স্যান্ডো গেঞ্জি (sandow genji)
A sleeveless vest (noun)
The endurance of the Victorian singlet
Whether you’re an amateur meathead pumping iron or a professional Indian wrestler, one item of clothing is essential: the sandow genji, Bengali slang for a sleeveless vest.
The term was inspired by Eugen Sandow, a Victorian strongman who founded modern bodybuilding and built a fitness empire. In 1904 Sandow toured India, showing off his strength at packed arenas by breaking chains from around his chest and fighting local wrestlers, and Sandow’s name became a sartorial synonym. Sandow kora, “to do sandow”, is occasionally used to mean bodybuilding.
Sandow became famous in India at a time when pahlwan (“strongman”) culture was feeding a nationalist movement. Physical fitness was seen as important to the independence struggle. Some akharas (wrestling clubs) became training centres for revolutionaries.
Wrestling culture is now stronger than ever in India. The country has won four medals in the sport in the past three Olympic games. Eight Indian wrestlers and weightlifters will compete in Tokyo. Millions of people back home will be cheering them on, many sporting their sandow genjis in support.
Sudipto Sanyal
GOAT
1. Greatest of all time (acronym)
2. The best at what you do
Bleating the competition
Four gymnastics moves are named after Simone Biles, who flips in ways that no other female gymnast can (do not try the “Biles II” at home). She is likely to add to her already vast haul of medals at the Tokyo Olympics. So there was some justification when she recently wore a leotard adorned with a rhinestone goat, labelling herself as the GOAT, or “greatest of all time”.
Sporting GOATs have not always been celebrated. Athletes who made calamitous errors used to be dubbed “goats” as a shortened version of “scapegoat”. Sports stars rarely had the hubris to publicly refer to themselves as “the greatest”.
The meaning changed in 2000, when rapper LL Cool J released his album “G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time)”. As hip-hop and its braggadocious culture went mainstream, so too did the term – and the accompanying attitude. These days sporting GOATs proudly milk their accomplishments, and the acronym entered the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2018.
The term is now fuelling culture wars online. It’s not enough simply to appreciate sporting greatness, you must join a herd (are you part of the tribe that thinks Lionel Messi is the GOAT footballer, or Cristiano Ronaldo?). Such polarising debates are not confined to athletic supremacy – you can butt heads about the greatest president of all time, or the greatest food. When it comes to voicing an opinion, there’s no kidding around.
Josh Spencer
ILLUSTRATIONS: JULIA GEISER