stymie

Etymology

From the meaning in golf (where the stymie ball blocks the other ball from "seeing" the hole), perhaps from Scots stymie, stimie (“person with poor eyesight”), from Scots stime (“the least bit”). Or from Scots styme (“tiny bit, glimmer”) as in se nocht ane styme (“not to see a glimmer (of something)”). If so, it is a doublet of stime.

noun

1. (golf) A 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. (by extension) An 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

verb

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.
   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
   I was making such a drama in my head it was stymieing me. January 21, 2007, 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. 2018-07-01, John Rennie, “This Mutation Math Shows How Life Keeps on Evolving”, in Wired
2. (golf) To bring into the position of, or impede by, a stymie.