Handegg
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Any of the sports that are called football but are played mainly with the hands and with a prolate spheroid ball; that is, American football and (less often) Canadian, Australian and rugby football (including league and union varieties). humorous, slang, uncountable
"Football is certainly a misnomer, for the game is played not with the feet but with the hands, and the ball is not a ball but an egg. I propose that the game be played with the feet and with a ball, or else that it be called “hand-egg”."
- 2 The ball used to play such a game. countable, humorous, slang
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Football is certainly a misnomer, for the game is played not with the feet but with the hands, and the ball is not a ball but an egg. I propose that the game be played with the feet and with a ball, or else that it be called “hand-egg”."
Etymology
From hand + egg. The jocular implication is that the name football ought to denote using the foot to propel a ball-shaped [i.e. spherical] object, which is the usual case for soccer, as opposed to using the hand to propel an egg-shaped [i.e. spheroid] object.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.