rugby

Pluralrugbies, rugbys

Formsrugbies, rugbying, rugbied

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A form of football with an oval ball carried or kicked but never handled forward; points come from grounding it past the opponents' goal line or kicking it over the crossbar between the posts.

   Unlike soccer, rugby lets players pick up the ball and run with it.

   The two rugbies, league and union, still disagree on how many players take the field.

   Similarrugger

   Note

   The game is named after Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, where its modern form took shape in the 19th century. The word can even be counted when the different codes are meant: the two rugbies split over a debate about amateurism, and the union game is one of them. Rugger is another name for the sport.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   In the narrower sense, the form of the game known as rugby union.

   After two seasons of league, he crossed codes and signed a contract to play rugby in France.

   The club fields teams in both rugby and league, and the rugby side draws the bigger crowds.

   Similarunion

   Note

   Each form of the game is a code, and a player who moves between them crosses codes. Where both are played, the bare word often points to union alone and the other game is called simply league, so a club can field teams in rugby and league. Context decides, since the same word also covers the sport in all its forms.

3. 3
   nouncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Short for rugby shirt.

   He showed up to the barbecue in a faded rugby, cargo shorts, and boat shoes.

   The catalog sells a heavyweight cotton rugby with a stiff white collar.

   Note

   A clipped form and fully countable: one rugby, two rugbies. It lives in talk about clothes, usually listed beside other casual wear, as when Adam Mansbach sets "polos, rugbies, and sweatshirts" side by side in Angry Black White Boy (2007). The shirt buttons at the neck like a polo shirt, but its collar is stiffer, which is how the two are told apart.

4. 4
   nounPhilippinesuncountable

   Rubber or contact cement, a solvent-based adhesive widely associated with glue sniffing because it is often inhaled to get high.

   He picked up a small can of rugby at the hardware to glue the rubber trim back on the door.

   Outreach workers try to get street kids to stop sniffing rugby.

   Note

   Philippine English turned a brand name into the ordinary word: Rugby is a rubber cement made by Bostik, and the name now covers glue of that kind generally, written lowercase like other generic trademarks. The meaning is local, so outside the Philippines a reader will hear the sport unless the context, such as a can or a hardware store, makes the glue plain.

5. 5
   verbintransitive

   To play the game of rugby.

   Note

   The verb is made straight from the noun and takes no object. Its forms follow the usual pattern for a final -y after a consonant: he rugbies, they rugbied, with the y kept only before -ing in rugbying. In almost any sentence, play rugby says the same thing.

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