Today's Tidbit... Football and Archaic Language

Words are good. Words written during football's early years are sometimes better. We understand the words despite word choices and phrasing that differ from how we speak and write today. Here’s a collection of little stories from the pre-forward pass era that include entertaining word choices.

Some early writing uses a grander style than today. Other times, they use terms whose common meaning has shifted a bit. Take, for example, the short article below about holiday services at a Massachusetts prison in 1878, particularly the prisoners' choice of activities in the yard.

('Fast Day At The Prison,' Boston Post, April 12, 1878.)

From the beginning, football has been decried as a dangerous game, though the inherent danger has been part of its attraction for players and spectators. Even in 1883, before American football entered its mass play phase, they described it as "the most fruitful of any game of ball of severe injuries in the form of rupture and of broken, dislocated, and sprained limbs."