• stymie •
Pronunciation: stai-mee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, transitive
Meaning: 1.To firmly obstruct forward progress. 2. To stump, to obstruct all progress on thinking something through. 3. (Golf) To putt your ball between the ball of an opponent and the hole so that he or she does not have a clear shot at the hole.
Notes: Today's Good Word is a lexical orphan with no derivational family. The present participle, stymying or stymieing, may be used as an adjective or noun, though it is rarely put to such use. The alternate spelling of this participle, stymying, has led to the unauthorized spelling of the verb itself as stymy, a spelling US dictionaries generally find acceptable.
In Play: I find it rather appropriate that this word has, well, stymied me: "Dr. Goodword's attempts to figure out the history of today's Good Word were stymied at every turn, forcing him to make a guess." I am not alone, however; many of us are stymied from time to time: "Progress on the construction of the new mall was stymied by the discovery of an ancient Native American burial ground on the site."
Word History: Since a sty might somewhat impede vision, we might think that stymie is related to sty. This word at one point was styany, very close to today's word. Styany was a reduction of the phrase "sty-on-eye" and didn't last long. But while sties might impede vision, they don't blind us. So let's get a bit dirtier and look at the other sty, the pigsty. From the 16th through the 18th century this word was used as a verb meaning "to confine" (as in a pigsty). So, the phrase sty me would mean "put me in a place from which I cannot escape". Although the derivation of stymie from such a phrase would be a bit bizarre, 'bizarrer' things have happened in the history of the English language. (I will not be stymied, however, in my attempts to find the right words for Bill Guy, who suggested today's Good Word; the words are, "Thank you very much".)
