I was pronouncing this as if it rhymed with Hermione but it’s actually pronounced dormie-one. Dormie is a golf term used in match play that means a player or team is ahead by as many points as the number of holes remaining and therefore cannot lose. The expression dormie one, though rarely used today, would indicate a one point lead with one hole remaining. The origin of dormie is probably from the French ‘dormir’ which means to sleep. When the match goes dormie, you can relax because you can’t lose. This doesn’t seem like a good idea to me, since your opponent could still tie the match.
Dormie One was a very popular golf fiction book that came out around the time that the golf course was built and the streets were named. Lacking evidence to the contrary, I’d like to think that Dormieone Lane was inspired by the book.
Here is a link to the free book online.
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| Illustration from the book Dormie One. |
