different between stuff vs stack

English

Etymology

From Middle English stuffen (“to equip, furnish”), from Old French estoffer ("to provide what is necessary, equip, stuff"; > French étoffer and étouffer), from Frankish *stopf?n, *stopp?n (“to cram, plug, stuff”), from Proto-Germanic *stupp?n? (“to clog up, block, fill”). Cognate with Old High German stoff?n, stopf?n (“to plug, stuff”), Old English stoppian (“to stop up, close”) and Albanian shtyp (“to press, squeeze, stuff”). Compare Dutch stof, and German Stoff. More at stop.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /st?f/
• Rhymes: -?f

Noun

stuff (usually uncountable, plural stuffs)

1. (informal) Miscellaneous items or objects; (with possessive) personal effects.

   • The Bat—they called him the Bat. […]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.

   1. (obsolete, uncountable) Furniture; goods; domestic vessels or utensils.
      • 1630, John Hayward, The Life and Raigne of King Edward VI,

        He took away locks, and gave away the king's stuff.

2. (informal) Unspecified things or matters.

3. The tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object — as for example breadstuff into bread, or (more figuratively) the right stuff into an astronaut.

   Synonyms: matter, ingredients, constituents; see also Thesaurus:substance

   • 1697, John Davies, A Poem on the Immortality of the Soul

     The workman on his stuff his skill doth show, / And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill.
   1. (archaic) A material for making clothing; any woven textile, but especially a woollen fabric.
      • 1857, The National Magazine (volumes 10-11, page 350)

        "And you can buy a dress for your wife off this piece of stuff," said Lisetta, who had always an eye to business.

      • 1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial 2007, p.147:

        She was going out to buy some lengths of good woollen stuff for Louise's winter dresses.

   2. (archaic) Boards used for building.
   3. Abstract/figurative substance or character.
      • c.1599, William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2, 91–94:

        When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff

      • c.1610, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1, 156–157:

        We are such stuff / As dreams are made on

   4. Paper stock ground ready for use. When partly ground, it is called half stuff.

      (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

4. (informal) Used as placeholder, usually for material of unknown type or name.

   Synonyms: doodad, thingamabob; see also Thesaurus:thingy
5. (slang) Narcotic drugs, especially heroin.

   Synonyms: dope, gear; see also Thesaurus:recreational drug

   • 1947, William Burroughs, letter, 11 March:

     For some idiotic reason the bureaucrats are more opposed to tea than to stuff.

   • 1975, Mary Sanches, Ben G. Blount, Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use (page 47)

     For example, one addict would crack shorts (break and enter cars) and usually obtain just enough stolen goods to buy stuff and get off just before getting sick.

6. (obsolete) A medicine or mixture; a potion.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

7. (obsolete) Refuse or worthless matter; hence, also, foolish or irrational language; nonsense; trash.

   Synonyms: garbage, rubbish; see also Thesaurus:trash

   • Anger would indite / Such woeful stuff as I or Shadwell write.
8. (nautical) A melted mass of turpentine, tallow, etc., with which the masts, sides, and bottom of a ship are smeared for lubrication.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Ham. Nav. Encyc to this entry?)

9. (slang, criminal argot, dated) Money.

Usage notes

• The textile sense is increasingly specialized and sounds dated in everyday contexts. In the UK & Commonwealth it designates the cloth from which legal and academic gowns are made, except for the gowns of Queen's/King's/State Counsel, which are (often in contradistinction) made of silk.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

stuff (third-person singular simple present stuffs, present participle stuffing, simple past and past participle stuffed)

1. (transitive) To fill by packing or crowding something into; to cram with something; to load to excess.

   I'm going to stuff this pillow with feathers.

   • Lest the gods, for sin, / Should with a swelling dropsy stuff thy skin.

2. (transitive) To fill a space with (something) in a compressed manner.
   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

     The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.
3. (Should we delete⁽⁺⁾ this redundant sense?) (transitive, cooking) To fill with seasoning.

4. (transitive) To load goods into (a container) for transport.
5. (transitive, used in the passive) To sate.

6. (takes a reflexive pronoun) To eat, especially in a hearty or greedy manner.

   Synonyms: fill one's face, feed one's face, stuff one's face

   She sits on the sofa all day, watching TV and stuffing herself with cream buns.

7. (transitive, Britain, Australia, New Zealand) To break; to destroy.

8. (transitive, vulgar, Britain, Australia, New Zealand) To sexually penetrate.

   Synonyms: fuck, root, screw

   His wife came home early and found him on the couch stuffing the maid.

9. (transitive, mildly vulgar, often imperative) Used to contemptuously dismiss or reject something. See also stuff it.
10. (informal) To heavily defeat or get the better of.

    Mudchester Rovers were stuffed 7-0 in the semi-final.

    They totally stuffed us in that business deal.

11. (transitive) To cut off another competitor in a race by disturbing his projected and committed racing line (trajectory) by an abrupt manoeuvre.

12. To preserve a dead bird or other animal by filling its skin.
13. (transitive) To obstruct, as any of the organs; to affect with some obstruction in the organs of sense or respiration.
14. (Should we delete⁽⁺⁾ this redundant sense?) (transitive) To form or fashion by packing with the necessary material.
    • 1724, Jonathan Swift, Drapier's Letters, 5

      An Eastern king put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion, and placed upon the tribunal.

15. (transitive, dated) To crowd with facts; to cram the mind of; sometimes, to crowd or fill with false or idle tales or fancies.
16. (transitive, computing) To compress (a file or files) in the StuffIt format, to be unstuffed later.

Derived terms

Translations

References

• stuff at OneLook Dictionary Search
• stuff in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Tuffs, tuffs

English

Etymology

From Middle English stack, stacke, stakke, stak, from Old Norse stakkr (“a barn; haystack; heap; pile”), from Proto-Germanic *stakkaz (“a barn; rick; haystack”), from Proto-Indo-European *steg- (“pole; rod; stick; stake”). Cognate with Icelandic stakkur (“stack”), Swedish stack (“stack”), Danish stak (“stack”), Norwegian stakk (“stack”). Related to stake and sauna.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /stæk/
• Rhymes: -æk

Noun

stack (plural stacks)

1. (heading) A pile.
   1. A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
      • c. 1790, William Cowper, The Needless Alarm

        But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack.

   2. A pile of similar objects, each directly on top of the last.

   3. (Britain) A pile of poles or wood, indefinite in quantity.
   4. A pile of wood containing 108 cubic feet. (~3 m³)
   5. An extensive collection
      • 1997, Guy Claxton, Hare brain, tortoise mind: why intelligence increases when you think less

        She performed appallingly on standard neurological tests, which are, as Sacks perceptively notes, specifically designed to deconstruct the whole person into a stack of 'abilities'.

      • 2005, Elizabeth McLeod, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928-1943 Radio Serial, McFarland ?ISBN, page 26

        “We said, 'Maybe we could come up with a couple of characters doing jokes,'” Correll recalled in 1972. “We had a whole stack of jokes we used to do in these home talent shows

      • 2007, Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Education and Skills Committee, Post-16 skills: ninth report of session 2006-07, Vol. 2: Oral and written evidence, The Stationery Office ?ISBN, page 42

        Going back to an earlier question, which I think is very important, this question of how you use skills. It is no good having a great stack of skills in a workplace if the employer does not utilise them properly

2. A smokestack.
3. (heading) In computing.
   1. (programming) A linear data structure in which items inserted are removed in reverse order (the last item inserted is the first one to be removed).

      Hyponym: history stack

   2. (computing, often with "the") A stack data structure stored in main memory that is manipulated during machine language procedure call related instructions.
      • 1992, Michael A. Miller, The 68000 Microprocessor Family: Architecture, Programming, and Applications, p.47:

        When the microprocessor decodes the JSR opcode, it stores the operand into the TEMP register and pushes the current contents of the PC ($00 0128) onto the stack.

   3. An implementation of a protocol suite (set of protocols forming a layered architecture).

      Synonym: protocol stack

   4. A combination of interdependent, yet individually replaceable, software components or technologies used together on a system.
      • 2016, John Paul Mueller, AWS For Admins For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons ?ISBN, page 323

        A Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stack is a configuration of four popular products for hosting websites.

      Synonym: technology stack

4. (mathematics) A generalization of schemes in algebraic geometry and of sheaves.
5. (geology) A coastal landform, consisting of a large vertical column of rock in the sea.
7. (library) Compactly spaced bookshelves used to house large collections of books.
8. (figuratively) A large amount of an object.

9. (military) A pile of rifles or muskets in a cone shape.
10. (poker) The amount of money a player has on the table.
11. (heading) In architecture.
    1. A number of flues embodied in one structure, rising above the roof.
    2. A vertical drainpipe.
12. (Australia, slang) A fall or crash, a prang.
13. (bodybuilding) A blend of various dietary supplements or anabolic steroids with supposed synergistic benefits.
14. (aviation) A holding pattern, with aircraft circling one above the other as they wait to land.
15. (video games) The quantity of a given item which fills up an inventory slot or bag.

Derived terms

• chimney stack
• flare stack (synonym of flare tower)
• full-stack
• protocol stack
• technology stack

Translations

Verb

stack (third-person singular simple present stacks, present participle stacking, simple past and past participle stacked)

1. (transitive) To arrange in a stack, or to add to an existing stack.

   Synonyms: build up, stack up; see also Thesaurus:pile up

2. (transitive, card games) To arrange the cards in a deck in a particular manner.

3. (transitive, poker) To take all the money another player currently has on the table.

4. (transitive) To deliberately distort the composition of (an assembly, committee, etc.).
   • 2017 July 26, Lindsay Murdoch, "Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's first female PM, faces financial ruin and jail", in smh.com.au, The Sydney Morning Herald;

     In 2015 the country's military-stacked national assembly impeached her and banned her from political office over the scheme, which her government introduced after she had campaigned in 2011 promising to support the rural poor.

   Synonym: gerrymander

5. (transitive, US, Australia, slang) To crash; to fall.
   • 1975, Laurie Clancy, A Collapsible Man, Outback Press, page 43,

     Miserable phone calls from Windsor police station or from Russell Street. ‘Mum, I?ve stacked the car; could you get me a lawyer?’, the middle-class panacea for all diseases.

   • 1984, Jack Hibberd, A Country Quinella: Two Celebration Plays, page 80,

     MARMALADE Who stacked the car? (pointing to SALOON) Fangio here.

     JOCK (standing) I claim full responsibility for the second bingle.

   • 2002, Ernest Keen, Depression: Self-Consciousness, Pretending, and Guilt, page 19,

     Eventually he sideswiped a bus and forced other cars to collide, and as he finally stacked the car up on a bridge abutment, he passed out, perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from his head hitting the windshield.

   • 2007, Martin Chipperfield, slut talk, Night Falling, 34th Parallel Publishing, US, Trade Paperback, page 100,

     oh shit danny, i stacked the car / ran into sally, an old school friend / you stacked the car? / so now i need this sally?s address / for the insurance, danny says

   Synonyms: smash, wreck

6. (gaming) To operate cumulatively.

7. (aviation, transitive) To place (aircraft) into a holding pattern.
8. (informal, intransitive) To collect precious metal in the form of various small objects such as coins and bars.

Translations

Related terms

• stackable
• stacked
• unstack
• stack it

Anagrams

• ATCKs, Tacks, sackt, tacks

Middle English

Etymology 1

See stak.

Noun

stack

1. Alternative form of stak

Etymology 2

See stake.

Noun

stack

1. Alternative form of stake

Swedish

Etymology

From Old Norse stakkr.

Noun

stack c

1. a stack (e.g. of hay), a pile (e.g. of manure)
2. an ant farm, an ant colony
3. a stack (in computer memory)

Declension

Related terms

• gödselstack
• höstack
• myrstack

See also

• stackare
• stapel

Verb

stack

1. past tense of sticka.

Anagrams

• tacks