putter

English

WOTD – 10 December 2017

Etymology 1

Alteration of potter.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: pŭt'ə(r), IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtɚ/, /-ɾɚ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: put‧ter

Verb

putter (third-person singular simple present putters, present participle puttering, simple past and past participle puttered)

1. (intransitive) To be active, but not excessively busy, at a task or a series of tasks.
   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, pages 304–305:

     We tiptoed into the house, up the stairs and along the hall into the room where the Professor had been spending so much of his time. 'Twas locked, of course, but the Deacon man got a big bunch of keys out of his pocket and commenced to putter with the lock.

Derived terms

• pony putter
• putter about
• putter around

Translations

to be active

Polish: krzątać się impf Russian: возиться (ru) (vozitʹsja), копошиться (ru) (kopošitʹsja) Serbo-Croatian: poslovati (sh), petljati (sh), prčkati (sh), čeprkati (sh)

Etymology 2

From put +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: po͝ot'ə(r), IPA^(key): /ˈpʊtə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpʊtɚ/, /-ɾɚ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʊtə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: putt‧er

Noun

putter (plural putters)

1. One who puts or places.

   Coordinate term: puttee

   • 1995, Leonard Shengold, Delusions of Everyday Life, page 39:

     He was a model of anal defensiveness: fastidious in his dress and appearance, a collector and putter of things in order, a classifier and labeler.

   • 2012, Anetta Kopecka, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Events of Putting and Taking: A Crosslinguistic Perspective, page 55:

     […] for example, Gleitman (1990:30), in support of her claim for universal alignments of syntax and semantics, argues for the universal naturalness of three arguments for 'put' verbs (a putter, a puttee, and a location).

2. A shot-putter.
3. (mining) One who pushes the small wagons in a coal mine, to transport the coal mined by the getter.

Derived terms

• (one who puts or places): putter-on, putter up, shot-putter

See also

• carter

Etymology 3

From putt +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: pŭt'ə(r), IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtɚ/, /-ɾɚ/
• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: putt‧er

Noun

putter (plural putters)

2. (golf) A golf club specifically intended for a putt.
3. (golf) A person who is taking a putt or putting.

Derived terms

• Schenectady putter

Translations

type of golf club

Dutch: putter (nl) m Finnish: putteri (fi) German: Putter (de) m Icelandic: pútter m Maori: haupatu tīpao, haupōro tīpao Swedish: putter (sv) c

Etymology 4

Onomatopoeic.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: pŭt'ə(r), IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpʌtɚ/, /-ɾɚ/
• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: put‧ter

Verb

putter (third-person singular simple present putters, present participle puttering, simple past and past participle puttered)

1. (intransitive) To produce intermittent bursts of sound in the course of operating.
   • 2010, Pat Kelleher, “‘Some Corner of a Foreign Field …’”, in Black Hand Gang (No Man’s World), Osney Mead, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Abaddon Books, →ISBN:

     By the time the engine had puttered and died Atkins and some of the others were out of the trenches and walking towards this new wonder machine.

   • 2010 June 14, Dan Newton, The Wildcat, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN:

     Timmy's dad drove an old blue truck that puttered and sputtered to get to the top of the mountain, that led to the valley, where … the WILDCAT waited.

   • 2017 March, Jennifer S. Holland, “For These Monkeys, It’s a Fight for Survival”, in National Geographic‎, archived from the original on 3 May 2017:

     As I reluctantly left Tangkoko for the last time, bumping along the trail on a motorbike, Raoul, the alpha male who had smacked my leg, wandered out from among the trees. He was alone, and after I puttered by, I glanced back to see him swagger into the middle of the path to watch me go.

   • 2019 May 15, Olga Khazan, “What Happens When You Always Wear Headphones”, in The Atlantic‎:

     My boyfriend, the cello owner, makes little noises while he putters around, which distracts me from reading my 20,000-word long-form articles about Iraq. So I noise-cancel him too.

Translations

to produce intermittent bursts of sound in the course of operating

Russian: тарахтеть (ru) (taraxtetʹ)

Further reading

• putter on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• putter (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Pruett

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpʏ.tər/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: put‧ter
• Rhymes: -ʏtər

Etymology 1

From putten (“to draw water”) +‎ -er.

Noun

putter m (plural putters, diminutive puttertje n)

1. a European goldfinch, Eurasian goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)

   Synonym: distelvink

Further reading

• putter on the Dutch Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^nl

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English putter. Equivalent to putten +‎ -er.

Noun

putter m (plural putters)

1. (golf) a putter, a golf club used to putt

Further reading

• golfclub (gereedschap) on the Dutch Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^nl

French

Etymology 1

Borrowed from English putter.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pœ.tœʁ/

Noun

putter m (plural putters)

1. putter (golf club)

Etymology 2

From English putt +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pœ.te/

Verb

putter

1. (golf) to putt

Conjugation

Conjugation of putter (see also Appendix:French verbs)

infinitive	simple	putter
	compound	avoir + past participle
present participle or gerund1	simple	puttant /pœ.tɑ̃/
	compound	ayant + past participle
past participle		putté /pœ.te/
		singular			plural
		first	second	third	first	second	third
indicative		je (j’)	tu	il, elle, on	nous	vous	ils, elles
(simple tenses)	present	putte /pœt/	puttes /pœt/	putte /pœt/	puttons /pœ.tɔ̃/	puttez /pœ.te/	puttent /pœt/
	imperfect	puttais /pœ.tɛ/	puttais /pœ.tɛ/	puttait /pœ.tɛ/	puttions /pœ.tjɔ̃/	puttiez /pœ.tje/	puttaient /pœ.tɛ/
	past historic2	puttai /pœ.te/	puttas /pœ.ta/	putta /pœ.ta/	puttâmes /pœ.tam/	puttâtes /pœ.tat/	puttèrent /pœ.tɛʁ/
	future	putterai /pœ.tʁe/	putteras /pœ.tʁa/	puttera /pœ.tʁa/	putterons /pœ.tʁɔ̃/	putterez /pœ.tʁe/	putteront /pœ.tʁɔ̃/
	conditional	putterais /pœ.tʁɛ/	putterais /pœ.tʁɛ/	putterait /pœ.tʁɛ/	putterions /pœ.tə.ʁjɔ̃/	putteriez /pœ.tə.ʁje/	putteraient /pœ.tʁɛ/
(compound tenses)	present perfect	present indicative of avoir + past participle
	pluperfect	imperfect indicative of avoir + past participle
	past anterior2	past historic of avoir + past participle
	future perfect	future of avoir + past participle
	conditional perfect	conditional of avoir + past participle
subjunctive		que je (j’)	que tu	qu’il, qu’elle	que nous	que vous	qu’ils, qu’elles
(simple tenses)	present	putte /pœt/	puttes /pœt/	putte /pœt/	puttions /pœ.tjɔ̃/	puttiez /pœ.tje/	puttent /pœt/
	imperfect2	puttasse /pœ.tas/	puttasses /pœ.tas/	puttât /pœ.ta/	puttassions /pœ.ta.sjɔ̃/	puttassiez /pœ.ta.sje/	puttassent /pœ.tas/
(compound tenses)	past	present subjunctive of avoir + past participle
	pluperfect2	imperfect subjunctive of avoir + past participle
imperative		–	tu	–	nous	vous	–
simple		—	putte /pœt/	—	puttons /pœ.tɔ̃/	puttez /pœ.te/	—
compound		—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	simple imperative of avoir + past participle	—
1 The French gerund is usable only with the preposition en.
2 In less formal writing or speech, these tenses may be found to have been replaced in the following way: past historic → present perfect past anterior → pluperfect imperfect subjunctive → present subjunctive pluperfect subjunctive → past subjunctive (Christopher Kendris [1995], Master the Basics: French, pp. 77, 78, 79, 81).

Further reading

• “putter”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

putter

1. present of putte

Swedish

Swedish Wikipedia has an article on:

golfklubba

Wikipedia ^sv

Etymology 1

Deverbal from puttra.

Noun

putter n

1. a sound like boiling water
2. (by extension) simmering, boiling
3. puttering, "putter" (short, dull, quickly repeating noises (from an engine))

Declension

Declension of putter

		nominative	genitive
singular	indefinite	putter	putters
	definite	puttret	puttrets
plural	indefinite	—	—
	definite	—	—

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English putter.

Noun

putter c

1. (golf) a putter (club)

Declension

Declension of putter

		nominative	genitive
singular	indefinite	putter	putters
	definite	puttern	putterns
plural	indefinite	putters, puttrar	putters, puttrars
	definite	puttrarna	puttrarnas

See also

• driver

References

• putter in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• putter in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• putter in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)

Vilamovian

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

putter f

1. butter