stool
pronunciation
How to pronounce stool in British English:
UK [stuːl]
How to pronounce stool in American English:
US [stuːl]
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- Noun:
- a simple seat without a back or arms
- solid excretory product evacuated from the bowels
- (forestry) the stump of a tree that has been felled or headed for the production of saplings
- a plumbing fixture for defecation and urination
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- Verb:
- lure with a stool, as of wild fowl
- react to a decoy, of wildfowl
- grow shoots in the form of stools or tillers
- have a bowel movement
Word Origin
- stool
- stool: [OE] Although stools are for sitting on, the word’s etymological meaning is ‘stand’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *stōlaz, which was formed from the base *stō-, *sta- ‘stand’ (source of English stand) using the noun suffix *-l- (in much the same way as saddle was formed from a base meaning ‘sit’). The notion of ‘standing’ no doubt passed into ‘sitting’ via an intermediate generalized ‘be positioned or situated’.In the 15th century stool came to be applied specifically to a ‘commode’, and this led to its use in the following century for an ‘act of defecating’, and hence for a ‘piece of faeces’. Stoolpigeon [19] originated in American English as a term for a decoy pigeon tied to a stool.=> stall, stand
- stool (n.)
- Old English stol "seat for one person," from Proto-Germanic *stolaz (cognates: Old Frisian stol, Old Norse stoll, Old High German stuol, German Stuhl "seat," Gothic stols "high seat, throne"), from PIE *sta-lo-, locative of root *sta- "to stand" (cognates: Lithuanian pa-stolas "stand," Old Church Slavonic stolu "stool;" see stet). Originally used of thrones (as in cynestol "royal seat, throne"); decline in sense began with adoption of chair (n.) from French, which relegated stool to small seats without arms or backs, then to "privy" (early 15c.) and thence to "bowel movement" (1530s).
Example
- 1. Suddenly mr crick got up from his stool .
- 2. And the black stool sat there reminding us of the impulsive purchase .
- 3. The imac computer desk was constructed from ikea ludvig products and the vitamin stool .
- 4. Constipation usually is caused by the slow movement of stool through the colon .
- 5. On that stool I have learned many life lessons . I learned to deal with sorrow and anger .