A brief history of golf’s most basic words: par, birdie, caddy and more

This content was first published in Golf diarya quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA members. To be one of the first to receive Golf diary and to learn how to ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA member today!

The great irony of golf is that golfers don’t do that Doing it, they play it. You’ve no doubt been part of a conversation in which someone says, “I love golf” or “I’m playing golf today.” One thing you know right away: that person missed the memo that using the word as a verb is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I mean, is anyone going to “play tennis”?

It’s not enough to hit the ball, you have to do the talking, which can sometimes be a challenge for a game that seems to have its own language. The patois includes technical terms such as carry and fade and even ‘moment of inertia’ It MOI. You need to take divots on doglegs and hit blast shots to elevated greens. On the more jargon side, you have to distinguish your breakfast ball from your banana ball, and you’ve seen them both while playing a better ball — which isn’t the same as playing better golf. You can even go out for dinner with cabbage and chili dip and the occasional fried egg. When it comes to clichés, you’ve played cart golf, army golf, and met the ubiquitous blind squirrel more than once.

Your command of “golf lingo” indicates you’re an insider, but don’t get too comfortable. Did you know that bogey once meant “par” and that “par” meant contacting your financial advisor? ‘Curlew’ or ‘whaup’ probably aren’t part of your lexicon, but trust me, you’d love to have one. The language of golf is vibrant with color and life, just like the game itself, but both are evolving. Consider the changes in match play language, where those who stuck with ‘all squared’ were instead simply right, and anyone who didn’t like ‘dormie’ found they couldn’t lose.

These changes to match play vocabulary arose from the 2019 revisions to the Rules of Golf, which have played a role in shaping speech about the game since they were first codified by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in 1891.

“The widespread use of the golf language coincided with the rise of the printed word,” says Elizabeth Beeck, exhibit curator at the USGA Golf Museum in Liberty Corner, NJ. “That’s why so many of the common terms emerged around the 1880s and 1890s, the dawn of the Industrial Age, when it became easier to travel and communicate on a larger scale.”

Yet many golf terms date back centuries and disputed origins are common. What follows is an attempt to sort through the competing etymologies, past reports, and scientific guesswork to provide a history of some of the most basic golf words. As for curlew and whaup, they are names of a European seabird that were suggested and discarded as replacements for hole-in-one… which turned out to be aces.

Par

Like ‘muckraking’ and ‘gag order’, par came into the world through a journalist who twisted the language. In this case, Alexander Hamilton (AH) Doleman, an amateur golfer and writer from Scotland who competed in the 1870 British Open at Prestwick, asked professional counterparts Davie Straith and James Anderson to predict a winning score. After discussion, the pair said a perfect performance on the 12-hole course would amount to 49.

Par comes from Latin and means ‘equal’ or ‘equality’. At the time of the championship, the British used the word to describe the average performance of a stock; one could act above or below that standard. A few days later, when young Tom Morris shot a 149 in the three-round competition to win his third straight Championship Belt, Doleman wrote that he had finished “above par” twice. Doleman returned 20 shots himself, which is why his greatest contribution to the game is linguistic.

However, even that success took time. The first standardized course grading system did not emerge until the 1890s, and par itself did not gain official recognition until 1911, when the USGA codified a grading standard calling it “perfect play without chance and under normal weather conditions,” always allowing two strokes on each green. The R&A followed in 1925.

Bogey

Bogey originally meant what par does today, in that it represented the target score for a given hole. That definition emerged in 1890, when the secretary of Coventry Golf Club in England, Hugh Rotherman, established a scoring standard at his club. He called the goal total a “basic score.”

To the Scots, an ‘ogre’ had represented a demon or gremlin since the 16th century, leading to the term ‘bogey man’ and a popular song of the 1880s called ‘Silence! Quiet! Quiet! Here Comes the Bogey Man.’ By then, the term referred to an elusive figure that was difficult to capture, something like the modern Bigfoot.

As the concept of ground score spread, golfers replaced that phrase with “bogey score” and adopted the idea that they were chasing or competing against Mr. Bogey. A good player could be called a real “bogeyman,” and anyone who did not meet the standard “lost to Mr. Bogey.” At the United Services Club, which was open only to the military, they changed the persona to Colonel Bogey, who stood guard for decades.

As equipment and courses improved, good golfers could easily beat the Colonel and ‘par’ emerged as a target score for professionals and skilled amateurs. It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that American golfers began using bogey as a term meaning 1 over par, which at the time was simply a reason for the game’s founders to dislike Americans.

Birdie

‘Bird’ was ‘enlightened’ before it became a bird, if that makes sense. The standard term for shooting 1 under par on a hole is purely American and is derived from the slang term ‘bird’, which in the early 20th century meant anything excellent.

Its specific application to golf, legend traces back to the Atlantic City (NJ) Country Club, where AB Smith, his brother William, and George Crump, who designed the Pine Valley Golf Club, played the second hole. AB hit his second shot close to the par 4, and when he tapped in for a 3, he called it “a bird of a shot.” Then the trio started calling such a feat a “birdie,” and it stuck. The club commemorated the event with a plaque with the date 1903.

The Americans were not done with birds yet. The eagle landed at 2 under par for a hole shortly after the arrival of birdie, with AB Smith and friends once again claiming the honors, although the term did not become fully accepted everywhere until the 1930s. The logic was simple enough: if a plain old bird was good, the symbol of the USA had to be even better.

Smith and his companions used a double eagle for 3 under, but that nomenclature was largely undone by another bird, the albatross, which became favored in the 1920s. The exact derivation appears to have remained undocumented, although the species carries a logical continuity as it is a majestic and extremely rare bird.

Caddy

This is where the game’s story takes a detour to France. There are written references to ‘golf’ in France dating back to the 15th century, and many speculate that caddy comes from the French word ‘cadet’, meaning ‘boy’. As the story goes, Mary, Queen of Scots, came across the word during her travels and brought it back to her homeland, where it came to refer to anyone who worked as a porter or messenger. Eventually he made the jump to golf.

That sounds neat enough, but there’s a problem. Other historians say that the French did not play golf at the time of Mary’s visit, but some other game using only one club, which would not have required a caddy. Whatever the truth, Mary spoke French, as did many nobles, and ‘cadet’ made its way to Scotland (as did ‘dormie’ from the French ‘dormir’, meaning ‘to sleep’) becoming ‘caddie’ by the 17th century. Dictionaries labeled it as a golf-oriented term in the mid-1800s.

For

It feels like ‘fore’ should simply be a shortened version of ‘foreword’, used as a general warning to those ahead. That’s not it.

A more entertaining option revolves around military history, specifically the formations of riflemen lined up in rows, with one set kneeling in front of a standing set. “Beware foreword” served as a warning to the soldiers in the front when the back row was firing, and the theory goes that eventually changed to “foreground.” There is a particular connection with Leith Links in Edinburgh, Scotland, which stood next to a fort, bringing soldiers and golfers into close contact, although the warning there related to a pair of cannons flanking the entrance. Either way, it puts the fear of being crashed by a little white ball into perspective.

A second option involves forecaddies, which were popular in the feather ball era because they were expensive and difficult to make. To keep an eye on those leather-wrapped projectiles, front caddies were stationed in the landing area. Before hitting, golfers would shout “forecaddie” to alert his man that the ball was coming in. Eventually they shortened the warning to ‘for’. This, as noted, has a certain logical appeal, as the words ‘caddie’, ‘forecaddie’ and ‘fore’ all came into existence around the same time.

Golf

They say success has 1,000 fathers, which could explain golf’s unresolved paternal roots.

Candidates for the title include colf, kolf, chole, kolbe and kolfs, all of which basically mean ‘club’ and are associated with a type of game that involves hitting a sphere with a stick. Some historians trace them to the ancient Greek word kolaphos or the Latin words colapus or colpus, meaning “to beat” or “to fetter.” The games also appear to have some root in the Roman game Paganica, which consisted of a feather-filled ball hit with a curved stick and spread across Europe by the conquering legions.

Other experts say the Dutch game kolf – played with a stick and ball on frozen canals or fields – migrated across the North Sea to Scotland. It doesn’t help that, once the game came along, the Scots called it all sorts of names, including goff, goif, golf, goiff, gof, glove, gowf, gouff and gowfe. In Gaelic the word is goilf.

The truth is elusive, but all that matters is that at some point the Scots started playing a game directly related to the current version of the sport and agreed to call it “golf.” Back then they may have even ‘waved’, but no one does that anymore. At least not if they really know what they’re talking about.