The Caddy of golf films — or is it Caddie?
August 15th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood
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.
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4 Comments Add your own
1. Patty Olson | August 15th, 2008 at 8:35 am
But what about when I drive my luxurious Caddy, or Caddie, around town?
2. Leonardo duh Vinci | August 17th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I imagine many authors are able to drive a Caddy when the royalties come pouring in. Supposing that you have read many many books, is there a particular book that, after reading it, you would have said:
“I wish I had written that!” over ALL others? (Let’s stipulate the book has to be written in the last 300 years.)
3. Barry Wood | August 19th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Good question. I thought about this but wasn’t able to nail it down in the short time I had. A search on the Internet indicates both are used, but “Caddy” seems to be more common. Frankly, if you can afford one, and can afford to actually drive it around these days, you can call it whatever you want.
4. Barry Wood | August 19th, 2008 at 1:40 am
I have actually said that, more than once, about “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” a book about the origins and uses of punctuation that was a runaway best-seller a couple of years ago. It’s fun and informative, and probably sold enough copies that I could have comfortably retired by now.
Another book that made quite an impression on me in college was “The Immense Journey” by Loren Eiseley. It inspired me to read everything I could by and about Eiseley, a man trained as a scientist but with the soul of a poet. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but since I was training to be a scientist at the time, it took my breath away.
Sadly, he is no longer with us.
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