Other forms: stymied, stymies, stymieing
To stymie is to block somebody from making progress. Stymied by the rules, stymie the plan, completely stymied.
It means blocked rather than defeated — a stymied plan is still alive and going nowhere. The word is from golf: a stymie was an opponent's ball lying between yours and the hole, which you had to play around, and the rule was abolished in 1952. Note that it comes from Scots.
1verbstymieTo block somebody from making progress.
“Lack of funding has stymied the research for years.”
stymie is a blocking.
From the golfing stymie, an opponent's ball blocking the line to the hole, probably from a Scots word about poor sight.
Scots
stymie
English, today
stymie
Built from
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 a doublet of stime.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA