divot

English

Etymology

1530s, Scots divot (“turf”), also spelt devat, diffat, and the earliest form (1435), duvat(e), from Scottish Gaelic dubhad, a reduced form of dubh-fhàd, literally “black sod” (compare fàl (“turf, sod”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɪvət/, /ˈdɪvɪt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

divot (plural divots)

1. (especially golf) A torn-up piece of turf, especially by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof.
   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 8, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 155:

     Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool, as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.

   • 2007, Lewis Crofts, chapter 1, in The Pornographer of Vienna‎^[1], London: Old Street, page 4:

     Soon, thick dark tufts of hair began to spread across his scalp, hanging over his ears, a moor of unruly divots which he was first unable to tame and with time willingly cultivated.

2. A disruption in an otherwise smooth contour.
   • 2004, Aron Ralston, 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Simon and Schuster, published 2011, page 68:

     In these coldest hours before dawn, from three until six, I take up my knife again and hack at the chockstone. I continue to make minimal but visible progress in the divot.

3. (mathematics, astronomy) a drop in a graph between two linear portions (example)
4. The space between two pillows.

Derived terms

• fail and divot
• feal and divot

 

Translations

piece of turf

• Catalan: gleva (ca) f
• Czech: řízek (cs) m, vytržený drn
• French: divot (fr) m
• Galician: terrón (gl) m
• German: Rasenstück n, Grassode (de) f
• Spanish: chuleta (es) f

a disruption in an otherwise smooth contour

• Russian: вы́емка (ru) (výjemka)

Verb

divot (third-person singular simple present divots, present participle divoting, simple past and past participle divoted)

1. (transitive, especially golf) To tear up pieces of turf from, especially with a golf club in making a stroke.

References

• “divot”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• Fenton, Alexander (1986): The Shape of the Past: Essays in Scottish Ethnology, Volume 2