Teeing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The procedure of elevating a ball on a support for an initial strike
2. The action of positioning a ball upon a small support before a first hit in sports like golf
3. Setting a ball atop a tee to ready it for the initial strike during play

Etymology: The golf sense of "tee" is a word whose origin is unsettled, and the most plausible account begins with a back-formation. The noun was first recorded in the 17th century as "teaz," a form that was later reanalyzed as a plural, and from that a singular "tee" was produced. Its exact source remains uncertain, which is why the story is less tidy than the golf course itself. The word has a second, unrelated life in engineering. Computing borrowed it by analogy with a T-shaped pipe that splits a flow in two directions, so a "tee" in a plumbing or network sense shares only a shape with the golfer's peg. Two meanings that look identical on the page thus owe nothing to one another. "Teeing" is the verb form from the golf sense: the action of placing the ball on its small support before the first stroke of a hole. The support itself was once a little mound of sand or a plastic peg, and the name for that peg is the thing that gives the act its name.

Synonyms: placing, setting