Definition
verbTo physically place (something or someone somewhere).
verbTo physically place (sth or sb swh).
Sentence Examples
Any chance you know where I put my keys?
Put your hands down!
She put a blanket over the sleeping child.
Word Origin & History
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 uncertain origin. Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bud- (“to shoot, sprout”), which would make it cognate with Sanskrit बुन्द (bundá, “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”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack."
— 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
"‘No. I only opened the door a foot and put my head in. The street lamps shine into that room. I could see him. He was all right. Sleeping like a great grampus. Poor, poor chap.’"
— 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
"Theſe Verſes Originally Greek, were put in Latin,"
— 1670, John Milton, “The [First] Book”, in The History of Britain, that Part Especially now Call’d England. […], London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for James Allestry, […] , →OCLC, page 11:
"All this is ingeniously and ably put."
— 1846, Julius Hare, The Mission of the Comforter:
"Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had no more to say."
— 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC: