The Caddy of golf films — or is it Caddie?

4 comments August 15th, 2008

If you can’t trust the movie industry, what can you trust? Surely the most successful movie about golf ever made was “Caddyshack,” released in 1980. It’s also one of the most quoted films ever, at least among certain demographic groups.

Unfortunately, the preferred spelling for “a person who attends a golfer, carrying the clubs, finding the balls, etc.” is “caddie.” It comes from the Scottish form of the French “cadet,” and you have to bow to the Scots when it comes to the origins of golf.

The spelling “caddy” is the correct one for “a small container used for tea” (not tees) or storage devices for phonograph records and the like. It comes from the Malay word “kati,” a measure of weight slightly more than a pound.

When it comes to the plurals, however, they’re both spelled “caddies,” so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.