stool
Meanings
- A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- A seat for one person without a back or armrests.
- A footstool.
- A seat with a back; a chair.
- A throne.
- A royal seat; a chief's throne.
- A close-stool; a seat used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot, commode, outhouse seat, or toilet.
- A plant that has been cut down until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.
- Feces, excrement.
- A production of feces or excrement, an act of defecation, stooling.
- A decoy; a portable piece of wood to which a pigeon is fastened to lure wild birds.
- A small channel on the side of a vessel, for the deadeyes of the backstays.
- To produce stool: to defecate.
- To cut down (a plant) until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.
- Alternative form of stole (“plant from which layers are propagated by bending its branches into the soil; stolon.”).
- To ramify; to tiller, as grain; to shoot out suckers.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English stool, stole, stol, from Old English stōl (“chair, seat, throne”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (“chair”) (compare West Frisian stoel (“chair, seat”), Dutch stoel (“chair”), German Stuhl (“chair”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish stol (“chair”), Faroese stólur (“chair”), Icelandic stóll (“chair”), Finnish tuoli (“chair”), Estonian tool (“chair”)), from Proto-Indo-European *stoh₂los (compare Lithuanian stálas, Russian стол (stol, “table”), Russian стул (stul, “chair”), Serbo-Croatian stol (“table”), Slovene stol (“chair”), Albanian kështallë (“crutch”), Ancient Greek στήλη (stḗlē, “block of stone used as a prop or buttress to a wall”)), from *steh₂- (“to stand”). More at stand. The medical use derives from sense 2 (seat used for defecation).