Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter

An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."

Comments

Re:What part of "use a proxy" can't he understand?

[ZeroExistenZ]

...sentiments on a football clip. Later he's identified as hooligan on a football match of his prefered team [emphasis mine]
From your idioms I assume you mean soccer.

No, I do not.

If I break up the world in my own language, Dutch "Voetbal", or in German "Fußball" and the French "jeu de foot(ball)" for that matter, the same breakup of the word still stands: they all translate to "foot-ball".
It's not a local bastardization or misattribution as they are considered the same thing in 4 languages based which I know are in active use.

If I translate it to English, it's also "football".
If I would refer to "American football", it'd add the qualifier for clarification even though around here "American football" is considered a derivative of "Rugby", so they'd refer to "football", as you seem to think about it, as "rugby" ;)

As per definition: A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on. I would say "soccer" is an idiom because I cannot trace back on the base of it's elements what is ment by it. Football, however, suggests the game is played by a ball and using ones feet; which is the base rule of that game, you cannot use your hands.

So no, it's not an idiom.