Friday Word: Rabona
Jun. 19th, 2026 06:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calzephyr posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
1word1dayRabona - noun.
With the World Cup in play, there's all sorts of interesting terminology flying around, especially if you're not a sports fan!
Rabona is a flashy technique for when a player kicks the ball with a foot that is crossed behind their other foot.
According to the Oxford Learners Dictionary, the word originated thusly:
Argentian Spanish, from hacerse la rabona or hacer la rabona ‘play truant’; the football term is popularly explained as deriving from a punning caption, el infante que se hizo la rabona ‘the child who plays truant’, as used in a 1948 edition of the Argentinian football magazine El Gráfico to accompany a cartoon depicting the player Ricardo Infante, who had performed this action in a recent match.
With the World Cup in play, there's all sorts of interesting terminology flying around, especially if you're not a sports fan!
Rabona is a flashy technique for when a player kicks the ball with a foot that is crossed behind their other foot.
According to the Oxford Learners Dictionary, the word originated thusly:
Argentian Spanish, from hacerse la rabona or hacer la rabona ‘play truant’; the football term is popularly explained as deriving from a punning caption, el infante que se hizo la rabona ‘the child who plays truant’, as used in a 1948 edition of the Argentinian football magazine El Gráfico to accompany a cartoon depicting the player Ricardo Infante, who had performed this action in a recent match.
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Date: 2026-06-19 03:23 pm (UTC)