Transcript of “Hands in a Cap Gave Us “Handicap””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Sam DeFranceschi from the Metropolitan PGA calling in.
Well, hi, Sam. The Metropolitan PGA?
Yeah, I work with the Junior Golf Club, actually, in Brooklyn, New York.
Oh, okay. Well, welcome. What can we do for you?
In golf, we use the word handicap all the time.
And I looked into it and found out that the word handicap actually has its derivation in the game of golf.
But I was wondering if you guys knew of any of the early uses when the word made the jump from golf to regular everyday life.
I have a few other terms if you want to talk about, but I’ll throw that off you now.
Where did you read that it comes from golf?
Well, like any other normal human being in 2023, I’ve been using AI to do my research.
I suppose I should probably ask it where it found its information.
Oh, well, right there is the problem.
AI. It hallucinated or at least led you astray because it does not come from golf. It’s older than that.
And before handicapping became a thing in golf, it was a thing in horse racing.
But handicap actually doesn’t come from horse racing. It’s more connected to what originally, I think, was a children’s game, where if two children wanted to exchange things of value, they might argue about what the terms would be.
So they would put those two things of value in hats and their hands in there.
And then somebody that they’d chosen as a judge or umpire or harbiter would make the call and say, yes, these are equal or no, these are not equal.
So you owe him a little bit more money or another additional item in exchange.
And so it’s just kind of a way to settle disputes.
And in horse racing, it was often used to decide how much weight would be put on a better horse so that a race might be more equitable.
So that’s where we get the horse handicapping idea today, just from this original idea of two people being on the spot, literally hands in a cap while their decision is decided by a third party.
Right. Literally hand in cap.
And then that became used in horse racing to decide how a horse would be handicapped.
For example, to make them more equal on the track, you might put weights on the better horse so that it was more in line with the other horse and really have a competition, really have, you know, something worth gambling on.
And then the term later showed up in golf.
Interesting. Interesting.
Sam, you mentioned terms that come from golf. I think my favorite is stymie.
Oh, stymie is a great one. You don’t want to be stymied, do you?
Stymie is when the ball is directly behind a tree and you really can’t shoot at your intended target.
You have to take your medicine and play out, hopefully, into the fairway.
We also have things being par for the course, up to par from golf.
Yeah, you know, I’m interested in that, too, because people say, you know, his play was subpar in culture.
You say, oh, if he wasn’t doing well or she wasn’t doing well, you say, oh, they played subpar.
But, of course, in golf, if you’re under par, you’re doing well.
That’s true.
You’re right.
But par is older than that, and it existed before it showed up in golf.
So par as the level that you were trying to reach.
It existed before golf.
Well, other cool terms that do come from golf that are used often are tee off or to tee off on someone.
Fairway, bogey, mulligan.
Those sorts of terms are used and tossed around all the time.
Well, thank you for your knowledge.
Fascinating stuff.
All right.
Take care of yourself.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
Okay.
Talk later.
