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…
The rule of thumb
My last post reprinted a ‘well I never’ e-mail containing no less than 22 supposed true facts, many of which are actually popular misconceptions. If you haven’t read it yet, go back and have a guess for yourself which ones you reckon will turn out to be untrue.
I’m going to go through them one by one looking at the evidence, starting with the purported origin of the phrase ‘rule of thumb’:
In the 1400’s a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”.
As with many popular misconceptions, a quick Google search is all it takes to cast doubt over this claim. The number one result, as with many searches nowadays, is a Wikipedia page, Rule of thumb. A section called origin of the term takes up the majority of the page, and no less than seven competing histories are listed. On the domestic violence theory, Wikipedia says:
Linguist Michael Quinion, citing the research of Sharon Fenick, notes that there are some examples of a related usage historically — most notably with regard to a supposed pronouncement by a British judge, Sir Francis Buller, that a man may legally beat his wife, provided that he used a stick no thicker than his thumb. However, it is questionable whether Buller ever made such a pronouncement and there is even less evidence that he phrased it as a “rule of thumb”; the rumoured statement was so unpopular that it caused him to be lambasted as “Judge Thumb” in a satirical James Gillray cartoon. According to Quinion, the term “Rule of Thumb” was first documented in English in 1692, long before Buller’s reported pronouncement. The first known usage of the phrase “rule of thumb” in direct reference to domestic violence was in 1976, in the book Battered Wives by Del Martin
There’s even a copy of the James Gillray cartoon, ‘Judge Thumb’, in which Judge Buller is depicted selling thumb-shaped sticks to wife-beaters in the street. Charming. Still, whilst the rule is mentioned, it’s never explicity referred to as the ‘rule of thumb’.
Another website, phrases.org, suggests that the judge may not even have made this ruling, referencing Edward Foss, who apparently wrote that “no substantial evidence has been found that he ever expressed so ungallant an opinion”.
Yet more attempted debunking comes from Trust Canlaw, who put it down, rather amusingly (and I suspect falsely) as ‘yet another feminist myth‘.
So there seems to be no evidence of a ‘1400’s law’. Even if there was, however, (and there does at least appear to have been the notion of such a law), this still wouldn’t be good evidence for the origin of the term. After all, such a rule could itself be based upon an already-existant phrase and idiom ‘the rule of thumb’.
If you stop and think about it, using a thumb as a basis for a rule, or rough guide, is perfectly natural, be it measuring, pointing or estimating distances or wind directions (all of which Wikipedia gives as possible origins). Each of these rules of thumb could have arisen independently, leading to the phrase being adopted as a more general idiom. We do, after all, have measurements derived from feet and hands. Fingers, paces and even arm spans.
None of these more natural explanations for the origins of the phrase are quite as interesting as the domestic violence one however, which comes across as more shocking and surprising, both qualities which can help a popular misconception spread.