the.com/tug of war

means A contest in which two teams pull on opposite ends of a rope, each trying to drag the other across a center line.

from A plainly descriptive name: 'tug' is the old pulling word (from a Norse-rooted Germanic family meaning to draw or haul, cousin to 'tow'), and 'war' lends it mock grandeur. The phrase first meant any hard struggle or fierce contest — a 'tug of war' between rival forces or feelings — and only later got pinned to the literal rope-hauling game. So the metaphor came first, and the sport borrowed the name.