When I was at Oxford I played golf for the university second team, which is called the Divots. The word divot is familiar to golfers everywhere, describing the piece of turf dislodged when a club strikes the ground. Yet its origins have nothing to do with golf. The word comes from Scotland, where it originally referred to something considerably more useful than a damaged fairway.
Divot is recorded in Scots from the sixteenth century, when it meant a piece of turf or sod cut from the ground. Such pieces were commonly used for roofing cottages, particularly in areas where timber, slate or thatching materials were scarce. Layers of turf provided insulation and helped keep out the rain. Divots could also be used as fuel, although peat was generally more suitable for burning.
The precise etymology is uncertain. The word belongs to the vocabulary of Scots, a Germanic language closely related to English, and may have connections with older words associated with digging or cutting turf. However, no single derivation has been conclusively established.
The connection with golf was almost inevitable. Scotland was the birthplace of the modern game, and early golfers played on natural linksland, where sheep grazed and the turf was often uneven. When a player struck the ground with an iron club, a piece of grass and soil might fly into the air. To Scottish golfers, this was simply another divot.
By the nineteenth century, the golfing meaning was firmly established. The term subsequently travelled wherever the game was played, becoming part of golf’s international vocabulary.
Interestingly, golfers sometimes use divot to describe both the piece of turf removed and the hole left behind. Strictly speaking, the original meaning referred to the displaced turf rather than the resulting cavity.
The word has also acquired a wider meaning, particularly in American English, where it can describe a small dent or indentation in almost any surface, from a lawn to a piece of furniture.
There is something delightfully appropriate about this linguistic journey. A word once associated with the humble business of cutting turf to roof a Scottish cottage eventually became an indispensable part of the vocabulary of one of the world’s most prestigious sports.
At a dinner held in St. Edmund Hall in 1982 for students from Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School who were at Oxford or Cambridge, one of the senior fellows gave a short talk about each of us. He said of me, “David is a divot. I had to look it up. It’s a little sod taken out by a golf club.”