stymie

plural stymies · alternative stimie · alternative stimy · alternative stymy

1. golfA 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).
2. broadlyAn 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

present singular third person stymies · participle present stymieing · participle present stymying · participle past stymied · past stymied · alternative stimie · alternative stimy · alternative stymy

1. 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.

   5 more examples

   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/

   It constrained governments, businesses and labour unions to collaborate in planning increased rates of output and the conditions likely to facilitate them. 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

   In populations that have “burst” and “path” structures, for example, individuals can never occupy positions in the graph that their ancestors held. 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: block, thwart, bog down, hamper

2. golfTo bring into the position of, or impede by, a stymie.