foul
n. countablen. an action in a game or sport that is against the rules. When a player does this, the referee usually stops the game and gives a penalty to the other team.
n. an unfair or illegal act committed by a player during a sporting contest, resulting in a penalty or loss of possession. Frequently used in the context of contact sports like football or basketball.
The referee called a foul after the player tripped his opponent.
He committed a professional foul to stop the striker from reaching the goal during the final minutes of the match.
The game became increasingly aggressive as both teams accumulated multiple fouls, eventually forcing the officials to issue several yellow cards to maintain control of the pitch.
Inherited from Middle English foul, from Old English fūl (“foul, dirty, unclean, impure, vile, corrupt, rotten, stinking, guilty”), from Proto-West Germanic fūl, from Proto-Germanic fūlaz (“foul, rotten”), from Proto-Indo-European *puH- (“to rot”). Cognate with Dutch vuil (“foul, dirty, filthy, obscene, lewd”), German faul (“foul, rotten, putrid, lazy”), German Low German fuul (“foul, rotten, putrid”), Faroese fúlur (“foul”), Icelandic fúll (“foul, rotten, sullen”), Danish ful (“nasty, ugly”), Norwegian Bokmål ful (“clever, sly”), and Swedish ful (“ugly, dirty, bad”), and through Indo-European, with Albanian fëlliq (“to make dirty”), Latin puter (“rotten”). More at putrid. Ancient Greek φαῦλος (phaûlos, “bad”) is a false cognate inasmuch as it is not from the same etymon, instead being cognate to few.
Inherited from Middle English foulen, fulen, from Old English fūlian (“to become foul; rot; decay”), from Proto-West Germanic fūlēn, from Proto-Germanic fūlāną (“to rot; decay”).
Commonly used with the verbs 'commit', 'call', or 'draw'.
He made a foulHe committed a foulIn a sporting context, the standard collocation is 'commit a foul' rather than 'make a foul'.