Golfer

How to spell golfer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce golfer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does golfer mean?

1. nounA person who plays golf, whether for leisure or as a professional.

Golfer in a sentence

• The keen golfer booked a tee time before sunrise.

• Every golfer in the club paid an annual membership fee.

Where does golfer come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This word is simply 'golf' plus the agent suffix '-er', meaning a person who plays the game. The noun 'golf' itself is recorded in Scotland from the 1400s, where royal decrees actually banned the pastime because it distracted men from archery practice. Its deeper origin is uncertain, though most scholars connect it to a Middle Dutch or older Germanic word 'kolf' or 'colf', meaning a club, bat, or stick used to strike a ball. From the Scottish game the word spread into wider English, and the '-er' ending (an old Germanic suffix that turns a verb or activity into the person who performs it) gave us 'golfer' as the natural name for the player. The single 'l' and the silent-looking 'f' before the '-er' are the small spots where a writer might hesitate, since the word is short but not phonetically obvious.

How the word is built

• golf (the game)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)