List of Shibboleths - Shibboleths in Occupational, Sporting or Other Interest Groups - Shibboleths in Sports

Shibboleths in Sports

• While the term "innings" is used in both cricket and baseball, in baseball it is treated solely as a plural form, with the singular form "inning". In cricket, "innings" is both a singular and a plural. Thus, a batter (baseball) has an at-bat during an inning, whereas a batsman (cricket) has an innings. It is therefore easy to spot someone talking about one of these sports if they have more experience talking about the other.
• In the United States spelunking community, use of the words "spelunker" or "spelunking" is seen as an indicator of inexperience or ignorance. The word "caver" is preferred to "spelunker" and "caving" is preferred to "spelunking". The phrase "cavers rescue spelunkers" is commonly used to illustrate the difference.
• The name of Scottish football team Hibernian F.C. is frequently shortened by football fans in general to "Hibs" (pronounced to rhyme with "bibs"), but local fans of the club itself are more likely to refer to the team with the nickname "Hibees" (pronounced "High-bees").
• In Spanish, most association football team names are commonly preceded by the corresponding article (e.g. "el Real Madrid", "el Pachuca", "la Liga Deportiva Universitaria"). In Argentina, however, this practice is never used. Saying "el River" or "el Vélez" identifies the speaker as non-Argentine. The same happens with Italian teams, with differences between genres, due to Italian language tendency to attribute a gender also to genderless names. A.C. Milan thus becomes "il Milan" (male), while Juventus F.C. is called "la Juve" (female.)
• Also, British English speakers will almost always treat team names as plural (ex. "Manchester City are the reigning Premier League Champions"). However, American English speakers vary in their pluralization of the names, typically depending on whether or not the nickname is included (for example "The Dallas Mavericks are the most recent NBA Champions" but "Dallas is the most recent NBA champion").
• The Boston Celtics of the NBA have their nickname pronounced "sell-ticks" (a pronunciation also used by Glasgow's Celtic FC) as opposed to the conventional pronunciation of the word as kell-ticks.
• Team handball, known as just "handball" in French, is pronounced in this language by people who've played at school or in a club, respecting the origin of this sport, following the German sound for "ball", instead of all other "ball" ending sports pronounced the English way.