The origins of GOLF
I’m kicking this blog off by deconstructing, one by one, a list of ‘well I never!’ facts that were forwarded to me in an e-mail (which is presumably circulating across the internet). The first was the origins of the phrase rule of thumb, and the second is another supposed origin, this time of the word ‘golf’. The e-mail states:
Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled
“Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”…and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
Like the story about the origins of ‘the rule of thumb’, the appeal of this misconception is probably in its supposed revealing of a misogynistic past which would now be considered ‘politically incorrect’. The story appears to uncover a slightly devious history behind a word and sport which is now commonly known.
The claim is, however, entirely incorrect, and once you think about it, quite obviously so. The ‘gentleman only, ladies forbidden’ phrase is, for example, tautological, repeating the same information twice. It’s also a slightly awkward use of language. Furthermore, why would you name a new sport after the rules about who can play it? Asking your friend ‘do you fancy a round of gentleman only, ladies forbidden’ hardly trips off the tongue.
It doesn’t take long to find a few existing references on the internet which successfully debunk this myth. Snopes.com notes that:
Golf is an old word, one that first appeared in our written language in 1425. One theory says the word ‘golf’ derives from the Dutch word ‘kolf’, a generic term for a stick, club, or mallet used in a number of games similar to tennis, croquet, and hockey. However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, claiming the Dutch word ‘kolf’ as the origin of ‘golf’ is problematic for a variety of reasons. Another theory ascribes ‘golf’ to the Scottish ‘goulf’ (also ‘gowf’), a verb meaning ‘to strike or cuff’. This theory would at least place the origin of the word with the people who invented the game. As for ’striking or cuffing’, an integral part of the game is, after all, hitting the ball.
The website also amusingly concludes that an equally implausible origin theory for ‘golf’ could be that it comes from the word ‘flog’ spelt backwards.
The Phrase Finder website also falsifies the ‘gentleman only, ladies forbidden’ theory, noting that “the real derivation of ‘golf’ is obscure and the subject of considerable dispute”.
Another reason why this story isn’t true is that if it were, ‘golf’ would be an acronym (a word formed from the initial letters of a phrase), like ‘radar’ (’Radio Detection and Ranging’) and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). Acronyms are a fairly rare, and recent, linguistic phenomena, unlikely to date back as far as the history of golf.
Whilst it takes some time for genuine acronyms to occur (outside of the LOLing and ASLing from teenage chat rooms, that is), backronyms are all to easy to invent. This is where you take a word, pre-existing or made-up, and then invent a phrase using its letters. It’s a slightly corny technique that’s often used to invent names of local clubs or societies, or even company names or products.
A famous made-up backronym, much beloved of schoolboy pranksters, is that the sports brand Adidas actually means ‘all day I dream about sex’ (which for them is probably true).
Backronyms are a common source of popular misconceptions, and ‘gentleman only, ladies forbidden’ is just one of them. Who started it, we’ll probably never know…