NFL

See also: N.F.L. and Nfl.

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛn ɛf ɛl/

  • Audio (Mid-Atlantic US):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛl

Proper noun

NFL

1. (American football) Initialism of National Football League.
2. (Should we delete⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (American football, humorous, derogatory) Initialism of National Felon League.
3. (Should we delete⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (American football, humorous, derogatory, ethnic slur) Initialism of Negro Felon League.
4. Initialism of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Alternative forms

• N.F.L.

Noun

NFL (uncountable)

1. (mathematics) Initialism of no free lunch: applied to various restricting theorems.
   • 2002, William A. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot be Purchased Without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 204:

     First off, let us be clear that the No Free Lunch theorems that underwrite the displacement problem apply with perfect generality—NFL applies to any information that might supplement a blind search, and not just to fitness functions.

2. (chiefly UK) American football.
   • 2007 07, Running Times, page 64:

     Soon after Boston and London were over, two other dramatic races were playing out in my head [...] just as we enjoy the long term implications of a match result in baseball, NFL or soccer.

   • 2017 March 16, Pearl Bullivant, “Shine Bright like a Diamond”, in The Beast‎^[1]:

     In a neo-conservative era where parents have regressed by dressing their daughters as pink princesses, where toy stores segregate their merchandise according to ‘gender’, where women playing NFL in bikinis is ‘sport’, and where Miss Universe is every adolescent girl’s ambition, was I really that gullible to believe that Gen Y would radically commit engagement rings – and, hence, elaborate weddings – to the dumpster?

Anagrams

• FLN, LFN