Nutmeg (association football)

[4][5] In France and other french-speaking regions, children, (mainly boys) sometimes play a game called petit pont massacreur or "petit pont-baston" ("small bridge massacre" and "small bridge fight" in French, but equivalent to nutmeg slaughter and nutmeg rumble in English or string-a-kick in Jamaica).

[6] According to Alex Leith's book Over the Moon, Brian - The Language of Football, "nuts refers to the testicles of the player through whose legs the ball has been passed and nutmeg is just a development from this".

[8] Another theory, supported by the OED, was postulated by Peter Seddon in his book, Football Talk - The Language And Folklore Of The World's Greatest Game.

"Nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous exporters were to pull a fast one by mixing a helping of wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England," writes Seddon.

While such a ploy would surely not be able to be employed more than once, Seddon alleges it soon caught on in football, implying that the player whose legs the ball had been played through had been tricked, or, nutmegged.