Putt

Part of speech: verb, noun

Pronunciation: /pʌt/

Definitions

1. To delicately hit a golf ball with the intention of rolling it into the hole while being on the green surface
2. To make a light, controlled stroke with a golf club on the greens, aiming to gently propel the ball toward the cup
3. To gently strike a golf ball so it rolls smoothly toward the hole on the putting surface

Etymology: The golf sense of "putt" is a Scottish word that wandered into the game's vocabulary. In Scots, "putt" simply meant "to put" or "to push," and golfers in Scotland applied it to the gentle stroke that rolls the ball toward the hole on the green. The verb traces back to Proto-Germanic "putōną," which carried the sense of pushing or thrusting, and it is closely related to Middle Dutch "putten," meaning "to dig a pit." Dutch offers an early witness to the game's language. An early seventeenth-century edition of Pieter van Afferden's "Tyrocinium linguae latinae" includes a description of golf in which the word appears, showing that the term was already in use among Dutch writers of the period. Older English dictionaries once linked the word to Old English "putian," meaning "to push," but that connection is no longer accepted by scholars. Some etymologists have suggested that the word is a variant of "pot," meaning a vessel, or of "butt," meaning a cask, though these proposals remain uncertain. The Scots and Dutch evidence is the firmer ground for the word's history.

Synonyms: stroke, shot