putting
He keeps putting putting practice off to work on his drive.
Putting is a heteronym born from inflection rather than from its base words: put (to place) and putt (golf's gentle green-side stroke) are spelled differently, but English's consonant-doubling rule makes both of their -ing forms come out as 'putting'. In this sentence the first putting is /ˈpʊtɪŋ/ (postponing) and the second is /ˈpʌtɪŋ/ (golf), so the adjacent pair forces the reader to switch vowels mid-phrase. The repetition is precisely what exposes that two different verbs are hiding inside one spelling.
Meanings
Placing or moving something into a position; with 'off', delaying or postponing something.
- She was putting the dishes away when the phone rang.
- Stop putting off that dentist appointment.
The act of striking a golf ball gently on the green so that it rolls toward the hole.
- Her putting improved after a month on the practice green.
- He spent the whole afternoon putting instead of driving.
Word origin
Put comes from Middle English 'putten', likely from late Old English 'putian' (to push or thrust). Putt is a 16th-century Scots pronunciation variant of that very same word, which golf then specialized to mean the soft rolling stroke on the green — so this heteronym pair is a word colliding with its own descendant.
Fun fact
The collision only happens in the -ing form: 'put' doubles its final t under the stressed-CVC spelling rule (put → putting) while 'putt' already carries a double t (putt → putting), and the two land on identical letters with different vowels. 'Put' is also one of the few English verbs whose past, present, and past participle are all identical (put/put/put), while its offshoot 'putt' inflects regularly (putted).