to nutmeg
verb - informal

- in football, an occasion when a player kicks the ball through an opponent’s legs

Cambridge Dictionary

- a skill used mainly in association football, but also in field hockey, ice hockey, and basketball. The aim is to kick, roll, dribble, throw, or push the ball (or puck) between an opponent’s legs or feet

- by extension, the meaning can apply to any life situation where someone wins an unexpected point or victory over an opponent

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ORIGIN

Peter Seddon* suggests that this term arose because of a dubious practice used in nutmeg exports between North America and England.

“Nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous exporters mixed wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England. Being nutmegged soon came to imply stupidity on the part of the victim and cleverness on the part of the trickster.”

While such a trick would surely not be able to be repeated, it soon caught on in football, implying that the player whose legs the ball had been played through had been tricked, or, nutmegged.

*Peter Seddon - “Football Talk - The Language And Folklore Of The World’s Greatest Game”

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BY THE WAY

Nutmeg is native to the Moluccas, Indonesian islands in the Malay Archipelago of Southeast Asia. The word nutmeg, however, comes from Old Occitan, a Romance language spoken in southern France during the latter half of the Middle Ages. Old Occitan “noz muscada” combines “noz” (“nut”), from Latin nuc-, nux, with “muscada,” a feminine form of muscat, meaning “musky” (moschusartig).

The history of “muscat” can in turn be traced back through Late Latin, Greek, and Middle Persian to a Sanskrit word meaning “mouse.”

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SYNONYMS

bamboozle, catch out, con, deceive, do a number on, double-cross, dupe, fool, finagle, goldbrick, hoodwink, nobble, outfox, outsmart, outwit, outmanoeuvre, rook, set up, screw, shaft, snooker, sucker, swizzle, take for a ride, take in

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“Don’t worry Jim, getting NUTMEGGED is all part of becoming older and wiser.”

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A big shout-out to Jacky for suggesting today’s OWAD

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P.S. VIELEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

Paul Smith