Birdie
A score of one stroke under par on a hole.
The term comes from 19th-century American slang, where "bird" meant something excellent. In 1899, golfer Ab Smith described a shot at the Atlantic City Country Club as "a bird of a shot" after it landed six inches from the cup, and proposed his group start rewarding one-under-par holes with double stakes, calling it a "birdie." The word spread nationally within a decade.