7 Brilliantly Poetic Phrases Accidentally Invented by Sports

So, in the interest of casting the sporting world in a light that Cracked's bookish audience might appreciate, I'm going to talk about words instead. Because it turns out that having millions of people all talk about a sport is a great way for creative descriptions of that sport to appear and rise to the top of our active vocabulary. When you look closely at them, there's serious poetry at work in almost every sport. So here then, for your pencil-necking pleasure, are seven of the most insanely creative bits of wordplay and poetic descriptions that appear in the world of sports.

"Hospital pass" is a surprisingly subtle term to describe something so decidedly unsubtle (catastrophic maiming). It's so good, in fact, the use of this sense of "hospital" has been repurposed by other sports; for example, in the skiing world, "hospital air" describes massive, suicidally high cliffs that skiers fling themselves off of for some reason.

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To mock/attack birds, I guess?

I like this phrase because of the twin meanings implied by "icing." The first one is simply to physically cool the kicker down, possibly to induce cramping in his delicate, baby-soft kicking muscles. During those cold January playoff games, when it's kind of dumb for 60,000 people to all be outside like that, it's hard not to take the "icing" aspect of this phrase literally.

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"Please set the game clock to 0:00, because this is bullshit, and I am going home."

The second and primary meaning of the phrase is an extension of the first, implying that some kind of "mental icing" is going on, possibly to induce cramping in his delicate, baby-soft kicking brain and get the kicker to psyche himself out somehow.

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"Wait a second. Life is meaningless. We're all shadows screaming into an uncaring void."
"Are ... are you going to kick the ball or just stand there reciting your high school poetry? We don't have a ton of time here."

So, a great, descriptive phrase all around, even if the tactic is basically useless.

A similar technique with similar intent is used in cricket, which, if you're unfamiliar with the sport, is sort of like a baseball game without all the hurry. It's a wonder our language isn't awash with clever phrases invented by people discussing these sports, seeing as there's nothing else to do while watching them.

What makes this phrase so delightful is the alliteration and the prosody of it. It's fun just saying it; the words "give-and-go" sound like the play looks, a rapid interchange between two parties.

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"No Dale, don't give the ball to the defender then go. That's ... that's something else."

An extended and very similar relative is the Spanish phrase tiki-taka, which sounds like the noises made during an hours-long version of give-and-go where a soccer team makes a never-ending series of rapid short passes to each other while the crowd claps and checks their watches.

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It is admittedly impressive to see in action, but eventually one does long for kicka-the-ball-at-the-effing-goalaka.

From these curious attributes, a strategy to defend against Shaq soon appeared, in which opposing teams would foul the holy bejeezus out of him every time he had the ball. "Hack-a-Shaq" was the name of the tactic, three simple words that captured the strategy in a delightful rhyme. A rhyme that was itself paralleled by the rhyme between the mockery this strategy made of the rules of the sport and the mockery it made of the man being hacked.

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Don't feel too sorry for him, though. He was still responsible for horrible fouls of his own.

It describes what is essentially a perfectly aimed and weighted pass, one that typically travels through a very narrow window between defenders, hitting a teammate on the run. What makes the phrase so sexy is how all of the multiple meanings embedded in "slide-rule" perfectly describe what's happening on the pitch. A slide-rule is a tool our dads used when doing calculations back in dinosaur school, which emphasizes how precisely engineered this type of pass is. Also, the "rule" part implies a laser-straight path, which is typical for slide-rule passes, as opposed to long, looping crosses or lobs. And "slide" perfectly describes the motion of the ball, gliding across the turf, slowing down in just the right place for a teammate to run on to it. Where he'll score a goal or flop to the ground or whatever.

PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images
You know. Soccer.

So that's at least three additional layers of imagery in there on top of the simple definition of "pass." That's impressive; poets could work months and years without coming up with a similarly eloquent phrase.

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Should have been watching more sports, you quill-necked dweebs.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and doesn't have that thick of a neck himself, if we're all being honest here. His first novel, Severance, is incredible, coming out on Dec. 9, and available for preorder on Amazon or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

For more from Bucholz, check out 5 TV Moments That Caused Bizarre Real-World Consequences. And then check out 18 Sports That Are Way More Fun to Play in Space.

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