Putts

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /pʌts/

Definitions

1. A light stroke in a game of golf, where a player aims to roll the ball across the green into the hole
2. The act of using a club to gently hit a ball, typically on the putting green during a round of golf
3. A term for the specific movement in golf focused on accuracy and finesse, usually from close range to the cup

Etymology: Golf's "putt" arrived in English from Scots, where "putt" meant simply "to put" or to push a thing along. The sense narrowed on the links: the short, gentle stroke used to roll a ball into the hole on the green was the one that stuck. The same Germanic root, Proto-Germanic "putōną", also gave Middle Dutch "putten", meaning "to dig a pit", and an early seventeenth-century Dutch text describing golf uses a related word for the game's play, showing the sport and its vocabulary were moving across the North Sea together. Some etymologists have linked the English word to Old English "putian", meaning "to push" or "to place", but that connection is no longer accepted. Other suggestions, such as a variant of "pot" or "butt", remain only possibilities and are not firmly established. "Putts" is simply the plural of "putt", so the word refers to several such strokes taken across a round or a course.

Synonyms: shots, strokes