Other forms: putting, puts
Put is what you do when you move something somewhere and let go of it. Keys put down on the hall table, milk put back in the fridge door, a hand put on someone's shoulder.
Put never changes shape: put today, put yesterday, have put since — there is no putted outside golf. It also handles words and situations, not just objects: how would you put it, that puts me in a difficult position, she put an end to the argument. Then come the phrasal verbs, and there are dozens — put on a coat, put off a meeting, put out a fire, put up a shelf, put up with a noisy neighbour. Each one means something you could not guess from put alone, so learn them as whole phrases. And when someone tells you to stay put, they mean do not move.
1verbputTo move something to a place and leave it there.~20%
“He put the shopping bags down on the kitchen floor.”
2verbexpressTo express something in words, in a particular way.~27%
“Let me put it another way, so it is clearer.”
3verbcauseTo cause someone or something to be in a certain state or situation.~53%
“The strike put thousands of passengers in a difficult position.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense (8 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: place
Put started as a shove. Old English putian meant to push or thrust, and beside it stood potian, to push, strike or goad an animal along; both go back to Proto-Germanic *putōną, 'to stick, stab'. The trail may run further back to a Proto-Indo-European root *bud-, 'to shoot, sprout'. The push has faded out of the modern word, but you can still feel it when you put a stake in the ground.
Proto-Indo-European
*bud- — to shoot, sprout
Proto-Germanic
*putōną — to stick, stab
Proto-West Germanic
*putōn
Old English
putian
Middle English
putten
English, today
put
Built from
From Middle English putten, pitten, pytten, puten, poten, from Old English putian, pūtian "to push, put out"; attested by derivative putung (“pushing, impulse, instigation, urging”) and potian (“to push, thrust, strike, butt, goad”), both from Proto-West Germanic putōn, from Proto-Germanic putōną (“to stick, stab”), which is of unknown origin. Possibly from Proto-Indo-European bud- (“to shoot, sprout”), which would make it cognate with Sanskrit बुन्द (“arrow”), Lithuanian budė, and budis (“mushroom, fungus”). Compare also related Old English pȳtan (“to push, poke, thrust, put out (the eyes)”). Cognate with Dutch poten (“to set, plant”), Low German paten (“to set, plant”), Danish putte (“to put”), Swedish putta, pötta, potta (“to strike, knock, push gently, shove, put away”), Norwegian putte (“to set, put”), Norwegian pota (“to poke”), Icelandic pota (“to poke”), Dutch peuteren (“to pick, poke around, dig, fiddle with”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA