Word.ws English Dictionary

divot

/ˈdɪvət/

divot noun: a torn-up piece of turf, especially by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof.

divot: a torn-up piece of turf, especially by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof
Image: LRD615 from Nashville, TN, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

divot (plural divots)

  1. (especially) A torn-up piece of turf, especially by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof.
    • 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.1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 8, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, page 155
    • 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.2007, Lewis Crofts, chapter 1, in The Pornographer of Vienna, London: Old Street, page 4
  2. A disruption in an otherwise smooth contour.
    • 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.2004, Aron Ralston, 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Simon and Schuster, published 2011, page 68
  3. A drop in a graph between two linear portions (example)

Verb

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

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

Forms of divot

Noun
pluraldivots
Verb
third-person singular presentdivots
present participledivoting
past participledivoted
pastdivoted

Origin of divot

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”)).

Words formed from divot

Words that rhyme with divot

Questions about divot

What does divot mean?
Divot means a torn-up piece of turf, especially by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof.
What part of speech is divot?
Divot can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce divot?
Divot is pronounced /ˈdɪvət/.
What is the plural of divot?
The plural of divot is divots.

Words near divot in the dictionary

  1. divorcées
  2. divorcés
  3. divortiality
  4. divos
  5. divostroside
  6. divot
  7. divoted
  8. divoting
  9. divots
  10. divs
  11. divs.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: divot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-divot.ogg.

Cite this entry: “divot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/divot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.