Birdie

How to spell birdie

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce birdie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does birdie mean?

1. nounA golf score of one stroke under par on a hole.
2. nounAn informal or affectionate word for a small bird.
3. nounThe feathered or plastic shuttlecock used in badminton.

Birdie in a sentence

• She sank a long putt for a birdie on the ninth hole.

• A tiny birdie landed on the windowsill and pecked at the crumbs.

• He served the birdie high over the net to start the rally.

• His birdie on the final hole won the tournament by a stroke.

• The children watched a birdie hop across the lawn each morning.

• The plastic birdie wobbled in the gusty wind on the court.

Where does birdie come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word bird comes from the Old English bridd, which originally meant a young bird or nestling rather than birds in general; over the medieval period its sense broadened to cover any feathered creature, oddly swapping places with the older word fowl. The familiar ending -ie is a diminutive and affectionate suffix, the same one that turns dog into doggie and sweet into sweetie, and it gives birdie its sense of a small or dear little bird. The golf meaning arrived separately in early twentieth-century American slang, where calling something a 'bird' meant it was excellent or first-rate; a hole played one stroke under par was praised as 'a bird of a shot', soon softened to birdie. The badminton use, naming the shuttlecock that flits across the net, simply borrows the same playful image of a small bird in flight. Because the word is just bird plus -ie, the only spelling point to remember is that the silent-looking e survives before the final letter, giving the -die ending rather than just -dy.

How the word is built

• bird (the animal, from Old English bridd)
• -ie (diminutive/familiar suffix)