The Year America Discovered 'Soccer'

One of etymonline s favorite correspondents asks, " are there data on when the word [soccer] became standard in the U.S. , diverging from UK usage?" Thanks to digital archives, used intelligently by humans, the data on soccer is deep enough to root through in quest of an answer. You won t come back with a clean date, of course. Such a word spreads in subcultures before it blossoms in the head of…