stymie
/ˈstaɪmi/
stymie noun: a situation where an opponent's ball is directly in the way of one's own ball and the hole, on the putting green (abolished 1952).
Noun
stymie (plural stymies)
- A situation where an opponent's ball is directly in the way of one's own ball and the hole, on the putting green (abolished 1952).
- An obstacle or obstruction.
- Mary, will you be mine? Shall we go round together? Will you fix up a match with me on the links of life which shall end only when the Grim Reaper lays us both a stymie?1922, P. G. Wodehouse, The Clicking of Cuthbert
Verb
stymie (third-person singular simple present stymies, present participle stymieing or stymying, simple past and past participle stymied)
- To thwart or stump; to cause to fail or to leave hopelessly puzzled, confused, or stuck.
- They had lost the key, and the lock stymied the first three locksmiths they called.
- If writing dates has you stymied at times, it is probably for one of two reasons. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-dates/
- To bring into the position of, or impede by, a stymie.
stymie meaning in Bengali
stymie in Bengali
- বাধা দেওয়া, পণ্ড করা
Examples of stymie in a sentence
- And above all, it blocked any return to the temptations that had so stymied the inter-war economy: under-production, mutually destructive protectionism, and a collapse of trade.2005, Tony Judt, “The Rehabilitation of Europe”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN:
- I was making such a drama in my head it was stymieing me.2007 January 21, Joyce Cohen, “Beauty in the Eye of the Renter”, in New York Times:
- Those structures stymie evolution by denying advantageous mutations any chance to take over a population.2018 July 1, John Rennie, “This Mutation Math Shows How Life Keeps on Evolving”, in Wired:
- For all his faults and grandstanding, however, Prescott genuinely cared - and his ambitious plans for tram schemes and railway extensions were stymied by lack of support from Downing Street.2024 January 10, Christian Wolmar, “A time for change? ... just as it was back in issue 262”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 60:
Synonyms of stymie
Forms of stymie
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | stymies |
| alternative form | stimie |
| alternative form | stimy |
| alternative form | stymy |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | stymies |
| present participle | stymieing |
| present participle | stymying |
| past participle | stymied |
| past | stymied |
Origin of stymie
From the meaning in golf (where the stymie ball blocks the other ball from "seeing" the hole), perhaps from Scots stymie, stimie (“person with poor eyesight”), from Scots stime (“the least bit”). Or from Scots styme (“tiny bit, glimmer”) as in se nocht ane styme (“not to see a glimmer (of something)”). If so, it is a doublet of stime.
Words formed from stymie
Words that rhyme with stymie
Questions about stymie
- What does stymie mean?
- Stymie means a situation where an opponent's ball is directly in the way of one's own ball and the hole, on the putting green (abolished 1952).
- What is stymie in Bengali?
- Stymie in Bengali is বাধা দেওয়া, পণ্ড করা. See Stymie meaning in Bengali.
- How do you use stymie in a sentence?
- And above all, it blocked any return to the temptations that had so stymied the inter-war economy: under-production, mutually destructive protectionism, and a collapse of trade.
- What part of speech is stymie?
- Stymie can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce stymie?
- Stymie is pronounced /ˈstaɪmi/.
- What is the plural of stymie?
- The plural of stymie is stymies.
Words near stymie in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stymie (page history and authors); stymie (Bengali Wiktionary) (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-stymie.ogg.
Cite this entry: “stymie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stymie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.