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Golf was being played in Scotland as early as the 15th century, but it wasn't until the 19th century that the sport really caught on in England and North America. It was also in the 19th century that the word stymie entered English as a noun referring to a golfing situation in which one player's ball lies between another ball and the hole on the putting green, thereby blocking the line of play. Later, stymie came to be used as a verb meaning "to bring into the position of, or impede by, a stymie." By the early 20th century, the verb was being applied in similarly vexing non-golf contexts.
Examples of stymie in a Sentence
Tom Rogers, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Apr. 2025
Short-term efforts to move resources around have also been stymied by Congressional restrictions.
—Mara Karlin, Foreign Affairs, 24 Apr. 2025
But his effort to ban transgender troops from the military has been stymied by federal courts.
—Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, 23 Apr. 2025
The government will counter by producing multiple witnesses from Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Microsoft, and others to explain how their search businesses were stymied by Google and how hacking off Chrome could rectify that.
—Ryan Whitwam, ArsTechnica, 21 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for stymie
Cite this Entry
“Stymie.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stymie. Accessed 20 May. 2025.
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stymie
verb
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