Happily for present-day golfers, though the English language is an organic and changing animal, their sport is rooted in tradition. Otherwise they may have had to describe their momentous achievement of playing a hole in one-under-par as a 'coolie', or even, God help us, a 'savagie'.

Thankfully, when Ab Smith played a threeball with his brother William and a friend called George Crump at Atlantic City in 1899 different slang words were in vogue. 'Bird' was then the standard American term to describe any achievement of particular excellence so at about that time Henry Ford was considering his 'bird' of a car that became the Model T, and the Wright brothers were designing a 'bird' of a machine that would enable man to fly.

When Ab played a cracker into the par-four second at Atlantic City that pitched inches from the pin, he proudly told his colleagues that he had just played 'a bird of a shot'. He also mischievously suggested that anybody winning a hole in one-underpar should be paid double on the bet. His partners readily agreed and from then on a score of one under par on a hole became a birdie and the theme was later developed to include eagle and albatross for two- and three-under-par scores at a hole. So the next time you hear some young fella in the clubhouse describe his 'cool' chip on the third or a 'savage' five-wood into the 13th, just be thankful that Ab, George and William got there first, and that a birdie will always be a birdie.

THE NUTMEG

Most of the really talented and flamboyant soccer players have possessed an easy ability to execute a humiliating nutmeg on a less skilful opponent. Pele, Maradona, George Best, Johan Cruyff and John O'Shea have all famously pushed the ball through the legs of a flat-footed marker, then skipped around him to take possession on the other side. "John O'Shea?" you ask incredulously. O'Shea, when young and carefree 'nutmegged' the mighty Luis Figo in a Champions League game at Old Trafford and became the legend in Manchester he remains to this day.

There are a few explanations for the origin of the term 'nutmeg'. One of the more scientific of these comes from Victorian times when apparently it was easy enough to fake nutmeg so it became a verb for the spice traders. To 'nutmeg' meant to deceive or to trick somebody. A more likely beginning comes from less linguistically complex fans on football terraces, who used the rhyming slang possibilities of 'nutmegs' . . . through the legs to describe the manoeuvre. Another interpretation is that it is derived from the crude slang word for a part of the male anatomy close to the area the ball is pushed through. Hence when John O'Shea showed Figo just who was the daddy a cry of "nuts" may well have gone up on the Stretford End.

CATCH A CRAB

There may well be duller sporting events than the university boat race, but it's hard to think exactly what they might be. Yet the annual April ritual of 16 bulked-up students being encouraged up the Thames by diminutive coxswains has always caused a disproportionate sense of drama in British broadcasting. The whole thing has only three opportunities for excitement.

One or even both of the boats might sink. You have to go back almost a century for the last double sinking, although Oxford lit up things a bit when they went under alone in 1978. The second opportunity for excitement was always found in the television commentaries. Listening to Harry Carpenter's attempts to create tension for the common man while describing toffs passing Fulham's football stadium in a boat was always good fun. His greatest moment came in 1977 when he observed, "Ah, isn't that nice. The wife of the Cambridge president is kissing the Cox of the Oxford crew".

However, by far the most interesting thing that can happen in a boat race is that one of the crews might "Catch a Crab". This happens when an oar is sunk so deeply into the water that it causes the rower to jolt heavily and for the crew to lose momentum and quite often the race. It feels as though the oar has been grabbed by a crab, which is disinclined to let it go again. It is tremendously exciting stuff, and shouldn't be missed.

THE BOSTON CRAB

If your desire for crustacean excitement remained unsatisfied by events on the Thames, there was always the reliable Dickie Davies on the other channel. Dickie's hairdo gave him the appearance of half badger, half television presenter, but he manned the gateway to the exotic wonders of athleticism that was professional wrestling in the north of England and its most devastating manoeuvre, the Boston Crab.

It was the hold feared by a generation not because it was performed by two overweight sweaty men in swimming trunks, but because anybody with an older brother who had watched ITV World of Sport in the 1970s spent Saturday evenings trying to avoid him and the possibility of severe damage to their back.

The hold is a type of spinal lock where the wrestler hooks his opponent's legs and then flips him face-down on the mat, stepping over him in the process. The final position has the wrestler in sitting position on this opponent's back bending his legs back toward his face. This is way, way more painful than it sounds. Like most things associated with professional wrestling there are many superhyped up variations of the Boston Crab, including The Tarantula, The Walls of Jericho and the Scorpion Death Lock.

THE GOOGLY

Now that Ireland is suddenly the most discerning cricket nation on the planet there are few terms left that need to be explained, although the 'googly' may be an exception. Known as a 'wrong un' in Australia, the googly is one of the most deceptively vicious balls in cricket, a fake . . . the equivalent of a 'no look' pass in basketball or any move at all in professional wrestling, even a Boston Crab.

Technically it is an off break bowled with a legspin action, with the ball released from the back of the hand. Although the action of the fingers and the wrist is the same, the ball starts spinning the "wrong way" . . . from off to leg stump. The left-handed bowler's equivalent ball is known as a 'Chinaman', after West Indies spinner Ellis Achong, who came from Chinese extraction.

The Googly was invented by Englishman Bernard Bosanquet at the turn of the last century as a bit of a joke to amuse his teammates. It soon caught on and is a brilliantly effective ball if delivered correctly. It can make a total fool of batsmen or, as one newspaper reported, make their "eyes goggle", and hence the name googly. Bosanquet was asked if he felt his new invention might be illegal.

"No, " he replied. "Only immoral."

THE SLIOTAR

The sliotar is more a piece of equipment than a pure sporting term, but such is its critical importance to our enjoyment of even the wettest of summers that its is awarded an exalted place on the list. The world's most important combination of cork and pigskin is probably named from the Irish 'sliabh' (mountain) and 'thar' (across), an origination that is celebrated in an annual poc fada competition in the Cooley Mountains.

Naturally enough for a ball used in a game played not by men but by giants, the sliotar has an epic history. Standardised by Johnny McAuliffe from Limerick over a century ago, there had previously been bronze, wood and rope and leather versions of the ball, some dating back to pre-Christian times. It is unrecorded what version of the ball the young Setanta carried when he arrived late at the house of Culann for King Conor's banquet but whatever it was made from it was hard enough to fire down the throat of a monster guard dog with what could well have been the last great hurling stroke played by a man of Ulster.

His heroic strike of the sliotar earned him the name Cuchulainn and, there being no Aussie rules in those days, this Setanta stuck around to defend his people and his province and achieve a different kind of immortality.