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The Meaning of Headlines: 'the gloves are off' - FIFA





Online Vice News reported information on the FIFA corruption situation with a headline, 'The Gloves Are Off, the Die Is Cast, Tyrants Will Fall: FIFA's Jack Warner Speaks' on June 4, 2015. What do the phrases 'the gloves are off' and 'the die is cast' mean? 

The article is about former senior FIFA official, Jack Warner, promising to tell his secrets of FIFA and its president Joseph Sepp Blatter. Warner, who has been indicted in the bribery scandal, and denies any wrong doing, has promised to 'unleash a tide of evidence relating to the dealings of world soccer's governing body.'

The headline is a reference to the revelations in a paid political advertisement, entitled 'Jack Warner: The gloves are off' in which Warner said he had prepared a comprehensive series of documents on FIFA's financial transactions.

According to oxford dictionaries.com the phrase 'the gloves are off' is used to 'express the notion that something will be done in an uncompromising or ruthless way.' The phrase emanates from the sport of boxing. Gloves on indicated fair play according to standard rules, and gloves off indicates bare-knuckle fighting, generally without rules. Wiktionary.org indicates that the phrase is idiomatic to mean 'to argue or compete without regard to one's actions or feelings.' It adds that literally it means 'from the sport of boxing where competitors fistfight wearing padded gloves - removing the gloves during a fight could result in serious physical injury.' Another term that means the same as 'the gloves are off' is 'if push comes to shove.' And in this case, Warner has been shoved.

Wikepedia.org indicates that 'the die is cast' is a Latin phrase (alea iata est). Seutonius said it to Julius Caesar in 49BC when he led his army across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy in defiance to begin a long civil war. The phrase is used today to mean that 'events have passed a point of no return, that something, whatever it is, will inevitably happen.'

The sport in the article is not boxing; it is football (also called soccer in some countries). However, it seems that Jack Warner is in a heated mood and is acting or reacting without regard to someone's feelings - that being Blatter and FIFA. The article states that Warner said that 'Blatter had turned against him.' Warner will do as he says - he will reveal secrets. Hence the die is cast.

Scorecard for the Vice News headline is 100% for the blow-by-blow account of a 'gloves off' reaction, and a catchy headline that adds a second phrase of inevitability.



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