Welcome to Soccer 101, the podcast where we answer the soccer questions you never knew you had.

My name's Ryan Bailey and joining me today, hello Joe Lowry. Hello, Ryan Bailey. Oh, you copied my strange intonation. Thank you very much, Joe. And a little snigger there from Graham, Rutherland. Hello. Oh, do I not get the same introduction? Hi, Ryan. Well, your name's Graham, his name's Joe. What else do you want different? Well, I thought you'd maybe be doing the same tone.

Hello, Ryan Bailey.

I was embarrassed enough by the first one.

All right, just the three of us today for this one,

but we've got a very interesting topic to cover.

We're looking at soccer terminology, principally,

the terms that are used for a player who is fortunate enough to have scored more than one goal in a game.

Why don't we crack straight to it?

Joseph, tell me, what does it mean, or what is the word we use when a player scores a two goals in a game?

Pray tell.

I know this one.

So when a player scores the two goals in a game, we call it a brace. And that is pretty common terminology, right? A lot of folks use that to describe a multi-goal, specifically two-goal game. The origin of this term, though, guys, I did not know. And maybe you fellas did. But I had to really dive into the research here because all the years that I've watched soccer, which granted, not as many as a lot of other folks, but still, I did not know what this word meant or why we use this word to describe a two-goal game.

So I dug into the roots of this going back to English and French and Latin in the 14,, 15th, 16th centuries. According to Oxford

languages, Brace has its roots in Middle English as a verb, meaning to clasp or fasten

tightly. I'm kind of an etymology nerd, so sorry if I go slightly long here. To clasp or fashion

tightly, fasten tightly. It also has roots in old French,

meaning two arms. There's a little hint of two there for the first time. And then Latin,

as the plural of brachium, which meant arms. So if you have multiple there, you'd be sitting

with two arms. So apparently in the 15th century, brace became an English term for a pair of things,

especially in hunting, a pair of dogs that you would go and hunt with, or maybe you would get

abrasive birds on the hunt.

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