brassie

1 9.9

A wooden golf club used before modern clubs for fairway shots with more loft than a driver

noun

Archaic

: brassie

After practicing all week, I felt confident using my brassie on the challenging par 5 hole.

Examples

In the early days of golf, players relied on a brassie for long shots, making it a vital club in their set.
You got your woods, driver, brassie, spoon, cleek.

King of the Hill (1993)
A brassie.

The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)
The golfer carefully selected his brassie from the bag, remembering how effective it had been in previous rounds.

Surface Forms

brassie singular

brassies plural

Morphology

brassie = brass (semi-transparent) = brass + ie

Formally formed from 'brass' + the diminutive suffix '-ie', but the meaning is a specialized historical golf club named for a brass fitting, which is not obvious to general learners.

Etymology

Brassie comes from brass plus the small ending -ie, because old versions of the club had a small 'brass' plate on the head. So a brassie was the 'little brass' wooden club golfers used for long fairway shots before modern clubs.