Why is it called Football and not Soccer or vice versa?

On the way to your 'soccer' practice, are ye?

The World Cup of Football/Soccer is on. As opposed to the World Series, everyone in the world IS actually allowed to compete. However, to get there your country's team does have to qualify but after that is accomplished, it's all hype and mayhem and distractions for however long corporate sponsors can make it last.

That said, I have no interest in the game. No reason, really. Just have other things to do. For instance, I played Go Fish with my daughter today. I also mowed the lawn and cleaned up the play room. I have one annoyance with the game, and that is why do we call it soccer while the rest of the world apparently calls it football?

To me, Canadian football is 3 downs, 10 yards and men with bigger balls than American football players. It's short bursts of adrenalin mixed with chess and large sweaty men. Football welcomes all shapes and sizes of athletes. If you can run 100 yards, there's a place for you on a Canadian football field. It should be every Canadian's dream to take in a Saskatchewan Roughriders game, just as every American should make at least one pilgrimage to Fenway Park in Boston.

Back to why we call it soccer and other countries laugh at us for it. Well, thanks to my all-purpose go-to website reddit and one submitter, I found out. It's all due to class warfare.

To put it simply, if you were upper-class in England, you called it soccer. If you were of the lower, working classes you call it football. And seeing as how most of the world is of lower/working class folk, the World Cup of Football is named for them. Because we learned the Queen's English through print and media growing up, it was media policy to call it soccer on TV and in books, so that the upper classes would get us to stop (or never start) calling it football, which was embarrassing to the Queen and her royal following.

The explanation in detail:

from AndrycApp

The term really fell out of use in the UK after World Cup '94 was hosted in the States. It became a cudgel with which to beat the yanks.

I totally disagree with that. First off I need to clarify two things
Despite my flair & posts in other reddits indicating support for Argentina, I am in fact English, 45 years old and live in England.
I need to mention two types of school which have different names in different English speaking countries. For simplicity I'll call them 'State Funded Schools' & 'Fee Paying Schools'. In England the rich and powerful went to 'Fee Paying Schools' and the rest of the population went to 'State Funded Schools'

The historic hatred of the word soccer by many British people has almost nothing to do with Americans using the term, it due to the origins and the use of the word, the 'class' of those that tried to impose the word, and the attitude of those that used soccer towards the game.

The UK is a country which up until the the late 1970's was dominated by it's class system. This class system should not be confused with an Indian style 'caste system' because there was social movement through the classes. The British 'class system' was a culture of people deliberately separating themselves due to a perceived status based on type of work and level of wealth. Back then someone who was 'middle class' would avoid social interaction with someone who was 'working class', or be seen to like the same things as a 'working class' person.

Association Football is a game created by England's urban 'working class' during the late 19th Century, which over time became popular with the rest of the UK's 'working class'. It also became popular with small amounts of the 'middle class' and 'upper class'. It was during that early period that the word soccer first appeared, but used by the 'upper class'. The absolute etymology of soccer is disputed. 10 years ago the BBC ran a series called "Balderdash & Piffle" where they worked with the Oxford English Dictionary to explain the history of English words. This authoritative programme advised that the likely source of the word soccer came from 'upper class' going to 'Fee Paying Schools' & elite Universities. During the late 19th Century these rich 'upper class' youths had a fashion for shortening their favourite pastimes and ending them with -er. So Rugby Football=Rugger, Association Football=Soccer, and Buggery=Bugger.

Over time Soccer became the term that the Upper Class used for Association Football while the working class called it Football. The class system dominated British culture up to the late 1970's. This domination included our TV & Radio. Everyone, including 'working class' people, were expected to use 'Queens English' when on TV & Radio. The fake 'Queens English' you hear from working class people being filmed back then is ridiculous. One impact of this is that TV, Radio, and books commonly referred to 'football' as soccer, because that's what the 'Upper Class' demanded.

So yes, books and TV would have referred to the game as soccer up to recently, but that was because the 'upper class' that controlled the media demanded the use the term. As result of this the typical 'working class' British football supporter hated the term soccer which was being forced upon them by the 'upper class'. My father was a union man and shop steward, and he would go into a red faced rage when he heard footballers using the term on TV. He considered them class traitors.

I think people in the UK under the age of 30 find it hard to believe that the class system was so absolute in the UK, but I can tell you it was.

Best personal example I can give is when I went to University in 1990. Most of the people at my University were from state funded schools and of 'working class' or 'middle class' backgrounds and called the game Football. The small number from 'fee paying schools' (upper class backgrounds) called the game soccer and always said the word with a sneer as if it was peasants game. One of my friends had gone to a 'fee paying school' and told me that football was banned at the school, and in fact up to approx 1985 you were punished if you were caught playing 'soccer'. The punishment was caning! (being beaten with a stick) So at least up until the early 1980's some schools for upper class children that called the game 'soccer' banned the game and if you were caught playing you were punished with a beating.

That's why so many Brits, me included, hate the term soccer.

tldr: I argue that British hatred of the word Soccer is mostly due to working class creators of the game using the word 'football', but British ruling class creating and using the word "soccer" as an insult.