American football game
- noun
- /əˈmɛrɪkən ˈfʊtbɔl ɡeɪm/
- The stadium was filled with fans cheering loudly during the American football game on Sunday.
- the first American football game
Examples
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He brings up the example of an American football game, in which a player scores six points with a touchdown.
Academic text (2018) -
Yesterday, I watched an exciting American football game where my favorite team won in the last minute.
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Attending an American football game is always an energetic experience with all the touchdowns and celebrations.
Synonyms
A match where two teams try to score points by moving a ball into the other team's goal
A team sport where two teams try to carry or pass an oval ball into the other team's end zone
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'American' specifies the U.S. variety of 'football' and 'game' denotes a sporting contest, so a learner who knows the constituent words will infer it refers to the U.S. team sport. While 'football' can mean soccer in some dialects, the modifier 'American' disambiguates the sense, and this modifier + noun pattern is cross-linguistically common.
Etymology
The term American football game comes from a style of football made in the United States where teams try to move a ball into an 'end zone' to score. People added American to the name to show it is different from 'soccer', so today the phrase means the football game played in the United States.