Etymology

stymie

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Today it 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). Full definition →

Scots stymie
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The story

  1. Scots · derived fromstyme“tiny bit, glimmer”
  2. Scots · derived fromstime“the least bit”
  3. Scots · derived fromstymie
  4. English todaystymie

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.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.