stuff

Pronunciation

• IPA: /stʌf/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English stoffe, borrowed from Old French estoffe (“quilted material; furniture, provisions”),^[2][3][4] from estoffer (“to equip, stock”),^[2][3][5] which is of obscure origin.^[2] It is usually derived from Germanic, from Old High German stopfōn (“to plug, stuff”),^[2][3][6] and Hoad and Merriam-Webster take this back to a Late Latin or Vulgar Latin *stuppāre (“to plug with tow”), from stuppa (“tow, oakum”), the source of stop.^[7][8] The OED finds this derivation open to strong objections,^[2] and the SOED and the COED derive the French verb instead from Greek στύφω (stúphō, “to draw together”).^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Quilted material worn under chain mail: about 1330 in the OED,^[10] before 1338 in Mannyng's Chronicle,^[3] or the early 14th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Word Origins notes that stuff first meant material for making clothes.^[5] It was extended to material for any trade about 1400, military stores in the early 15th century, and household goods or possessions in the mid-15th century.^[2][10] As matter of an unspecified kind it is by the mid-15th century,^[2] what a person is “made of” by the 1550s, and the substance of a thing by the 1580s.^[2] “Worthless ideas”, often in stuff and nonsense, is from the 1570s.^[2][5] A drug, especially heroin, is stuff from 1929,^[2][11] and know one's stuff is from 1927.^[2] The verb meant “to furnish, garrison” in the mid-14th century, “to fill, pad” in the late 14th, and the cookery sense of stuffing a fowl or pastry developed then too.^[2] Taxidermy stuffing is by the 1550s and stuffing ballot boxes from 1854, American English.^[2] The contemptuous stuff it is from 1952^[2] or 1955.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1330 – quilted material under mail.^[10]
• mid-14th century – verb, to furnish.^[2]
• c. 1400 – material for a trade.^[2]
• mid-15th century – possessions; matter.^[2]
• 1570s – nonsense.^[2]
• 1854 – verb, to stuff a ballot box.^[2]
• 1927 – know one's stuff.^[2]
• 1929 – a drug.^[2]
• 1952 – stuff it.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The material out of which something is made; substance.
2. Essential nature: the stuff of greatness.
3. Unspecified material or things; personal belongings; worthless objects.
4. Talk or actions of a particular kind; nonsense.
5. (dated, British) Woollen fabric.

Verb

1. To pack tightly; to cram; to block up.
2. To fill with stuffing, as a fowl or a cushion; to fill an animal's skin for display.
3. To eat too much; to gorge.
4. To put fraudulent votes into a ballot box.

Word family

• stuffer
• stuffless
• greenstuff
• breadstuff
• dyestuff
• feedstuff
• foodstuff
• stuffing

Related words

• stuffy
• stop

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge