Etymograph

English

putt

Putt comes from Scots putt ‘to put’, and goes back to Proto-Germanic *putōną ‘to stick, stab’.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*putōną‘to stick, stab’reconstructed
  2. Old Englishc. 450–1150putian
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500putten‘to put’
  4. Scotsc. 1450–presentputt‘to put’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1913same form

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed

Earlier history uncertain.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*putōną‘to stick, stab’reconstructed
  2. Old Englishc. 450–1150putian
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500putten‘to put’
  4. Scotsc. 1450–presentputt‘to put’
  5. Englishearliest quotation 1913same form

Earliest quotation: 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, (please specify the page): “There were the golfers. Was it possible that they…”

The story

The Old English putian (‘to push; thrust; put; place’) derivation is commonly assumed, although no longer valid. In Dutch, the word is instanced in a description of golf in an early seventeenth-century edition of Pieter van Afferden's Tyrocinium linguae latinae. All derive from Proto-Germanic *putōną.

Linked words

through Middle English putten ‘to put’

put, 2 more

Today it means

noun The act of tapping a golf ball lightly on a putting green.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Proto-Germanic *putōną / putt

Shirt and support for this word