(Ireland, UK, uncountable) Football (association football) (soccer in US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
(Australia, uncountable) The game or sport of football, usually Australian rules football or rugby league, but not soccer.
But footy, especially this kind of footy, transcended family drama — that went without saying — so Erik Falk had of course invited his son. 2022, Jane Harper, Exiles, page 118:
(Australia, countable) The ball used in a game of footy.
Me and Charlie and Ben were out there one afternoon, messing around, kicking a footy and stuff, and this girl rode by. 2022, Jane Harper, Exiles, page 105:
(New-Zealand, uncountable) Rugby union or rugby league.
(countable, plural-normally, uncountable) A short sock.
(countable, slang) A football fan.
Sam is a real footy, he's always watching it on TV and talking about it.
(countable, uncountable) Footsy (flirting game where two people touch their feet together).
He didn't even play footy under the table. I kept wishing he would! 1932, Movie Mirror, volume 3, page 76:
[…] playing footy under the table with Bee Amidon finished that for her. 1994, Tim Page, Dawn Powell at Her Best, page 361:
Compare Dutch vochtig. In the senses “insignificant, paltry; poorly kept, shoddy” Merriam-Webster suggests derivation from French foutu, past participle of foutre (“to copulate, fuck, screw”).
Meanings
(UK, dated, dialectal) Having foots (settlings).
footy oil or molasses
(UK, dated, dialectal) Of bad quality; mean, poor.
'Those sketches look rather footy,' I said; 'but I had to put something in my notebook.' 1911, R. Austin Freeman, chapter XV, in The Eye of Osiris & the Vanishing Man:
[N]obody wants you to shoot crooked. Take good iron to it, and not footy paving-stones. 1855, Charles Kingsley, “How Amyas Kept His Christmas Day”, in Westward Ho!: Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, […], volume II, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 6: