This week’s new-to-me word involves some arcana from American football. Even if you’re not a fan, though, you still might be interested in the background and the word.
American football has a weird scoring system, like this:
- Safety: 2 points (the Am football version of own goal, sort of)
- Field goal: 3 points
- Touchdown: 6 points
- Touchdown with point-after-touchdown (PAT) kick: 7 points
- Touchdown with 2-point conversion: 8 points
Because teams can score 2, 3, 6, 7, or 8 points at a time, the scores add up quickly, but not linearly, the way soccer or hockey does. For example, some common scores at the end of games have been 17–14, 27–24, and 20–17. A team might achieve a score of 20 with 2 touchdowns plus PATs (14 points total) and 2 field goals (another 6 points). Or they might score 20 with 2 touchdowns plus PATs (14 points) and a touchdown where the kicker missed the PAT (thus only 6 points). Anyway, you can see how you can combine touchdowns and field goals and the occasional safety to arrive at a lot of different numbers.
Of course, at the end of a game, there’s a score for both teams, which brings me to the word: a Scorigami (conventionally capped) is a final score that is unique in American professional football. For example, as of right now, no game in the official history of the NFL has ever ended with the score of 46–15. Or 29–8. Or 33–11.
When a game does end with a unique score, that’s considered a Scorigami. For example, on November 21, 2021—just a few weeks ago—the Indianapolis Colts beat the Buffalo Bills by a score of 41–15. This was news in the football world precisely because it was a Scorigami: the first time that that final score had ever been recorded. In fact, this was the Colts’ second Scorigami this season; earlier in the year they got another Scorigami when they beat the New York Jets 45–30. Other Scorigamis this year were games that ended 38–11 and 31–5.
A website tracks the current state of Scorigamis, which lets you see the clumping and the lacunae in the history of NFL final scores. As one example, the chart shows that there has been exactly one game that ended with one team (the losers) having a score of 4. Similarly, losing with a score of 5 or 11 is surprisingly rare. At the moment, the most lopsided game was 73–0, suggesting that there’s room on the upper end for more Scorigamis.
(Click the image to go the website and see the actual chart.)
The term Scorigami was invented by the sportswriter Jon Bois in 2016, apparently a portmanteau of score+origami. Bois made a great video back in 2016 when he introduced the term and where he explains the chart. If you like American football, it’s well worth watching for some fascinating and sometimes strange stories of the game. Bois also explains the obscure rule and unlikely circumstances that would allow a team to score only 1 point.
Although the term Scorigami was invented for American football, it’s started to appear for other sports as well. In 2020, a 29–9 win in baseball (!) was declared a Scorigami on the MLB.com site. Obviously, the way that scoring works in other sports—baseball, soccer, hockey, even basketball—makes Scorigamis likely only with extreme scores. But it can happen.
OK, the non-sports fans (sports non-fans?) can come back into the room. Let’s move on to origins.
I was wielding a beauty implement recently and thought “Why is this thing called tweezers?” The first thing that occurred to me was that it was a plurale tantum—that is, a word that’s always plural. Like scissors, and probably for the same reason, namely that it’s a two-armed thing.
But I couldn’t think of any obvious cognate, other than to tweeze, which seemed pretty obviously that it was derived term. (This is confirmed by the OED; the verb tweeze doesn’t appear till the 1930s.)
It turns out that tweezers is another instance of the transfer of meaning. The term originally was tweeze, which referred to a case for carrying small instruments. This was a variant of the French word etui, which we still have in English with that same meaning of “a small case.” The plural etuis (sometimes spelled etwees) was somehow interpreted as the singular and became tweeze.
The term tweeze was transferred to the type of instrument that might be carried in an etui. But the two-armed nature of the tool inspired further development, and tweeze added -ers, a change that echoed the terms trousers (originaly trouse), drawers (a garment that is pulled, or drawn, on), pincers (a tool for pincing), and pliers (a tool for plying). The lure of the -ers ending was apparently strong.
We’ve seen semantic transfer like this with some other terms, like ambulance, cash, and marzipan. I suppose we’ve seen a similar transfer, sort of, when people talk about writing a blog or reading something on their Tumblr. But I’m still thinking about whether we have other contemporary examples where the word for a container is transferred to the contents. Any ideas?
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
My wife asked if kids aged 10, 11, and 12 are called tween, can people between middle age and geezerhood be called tweezers?
They absolutely can!