the.com/touchdown
Worth six points despite requiring zero touching of any ground whatsoever.
means A score in American or Canadian football, worth six points, achieved by getting the ball into or across the opponent's end zone.
from A straightforward compound of "touch" and "down," born in 19th-century rugby football, where a player literally had to touch the ball down to the ground behind the goal line to score — hence the name. American football inherited the term, then quietly dropped the requirement that anyone touch anything down, leaving the word as a fossil of an older rule. The aviation sense — a plane's wheels meeting the runway — is a later, literal borrowing of the same image.
- misnomer
- No grounding needed; crossing the line suffices
- origin
- Inherited from rugby, where you did touch down
- point value
- Started at four, climbed to today's six
- spike tradition
- Homer Jones threw the first one in 1965
- also space
- Spacecraft landings are officially called touchdowns
super bowl liv touchdown — patrick mahomes threw 2 touchdowns in miami on february 2, 2020
jerry rice career touchdowns — san francisco 49ers legend scored 208 touchdowns, most in nfl history