handicap [M17th] This word derives from an old pastime that involved one person claiming an article belonging to another and offering something in exchange. An umpire judged the difference in value, and then all three deposited forfeit money in a cap, the two opponents showing their agreement or disagreement with the valuation by putting in their hands and then bringing them out either full or empty. This strange game was called hand in cap, later reduced to handicap. The word is first recorded in the mid 17th century, but the practice appears in the 14th-century poem Piers Plowman, and is known elsewhere in continental Europe from an early date. The handicap race (originally handicap match), in which an umpire determines what weight each horse carries in order to equalize their chances, dates from the mid 18th century. In the late 19th century handicap came to be used, initially in the USA, for a mental or physical condition that limited a person and for much of the 20th century this was the standard term, but disability is now preferred.