Golfing

How to spell golfing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce golfing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does golfing mean?

1. verbThe act of playing golf, the sport of hitting a small ball into holes with clubs.

Golfing in a sentence

• He spends every Saturday morning golfing with his colleagues.

• The resort offers golfing packages that include lessons and cart hire.

Where does golfing come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Golfing is the present participle and gerund of the verb 'golf', which simply means to play golf. The noun 'golf' itself is first recorded in Scotland in the fifteenth century, where it appears in royal decrees that actually banned the game because it distracted men from practising archery. The deeper origin is uncertain, though many trace it to the Middle Dutch word 'colf' or 'colve', meaning a club, stick, or bat used to strike a ball, which fits the trade links between Scotland and the Low Countries at the time. The spelling settled on 'golf' rather than the earlier variants 'gouf' and 'goff', and adding the regular '-ing' ending produced 'golfing'. Because the root is short and the suffix is the everyday '-ing', the word almost never causes trouble, with the only real curiosity being the silent quality of the 'l' in some older Scots pronunciations.

How the word is built

• golf (the sport)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)