Stub Meaning
/stʌb/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounSomething blunted, stunted, or cut short, such as stubble or a stump.
nounA piece of certain paper items, designed to be torn off and kept for record or identification purposes.
Sentence Examples
On a pay stub are mentioned: the gross salary and the net salary.
Layla had multiple stub wounds to her back.
CEFR Practice Quiz
He will ____ his toe on the doorstep if he is not careful.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Don't forget to keep your ticket ____ so that you can re-enter the stadium if you leave during the break.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English stubbe (“tree stump”), from Old English stybb, stubb (“tree stump”), from Proto-West Germanic *stubb, from Proto-Germanic *stubbaz (compare Middle Dutch stubbe, Old Norse stubbr, Faroese stubbi (“stub”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tew-; compare steep (“sharp slope”). Doublet of stob. Sense extended in Middle English to similarly shaped objects. Verb sense “strike one’s toe” is recorded 1848; “extinguish a cigarette” 1927.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"And prickly stubs instead of trees are found."
— 1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite: Or, The Knight’s Tale. In Three Books.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
"Even though the stub is a dummy, it allows us to determine whether the procedure is called at the right time by the program or calling procedure."
— 2000, Nell B. Dale, Chip Weems, John W. McCormick, Programming and Problem Solving with ADA 95, 2nd edition, Jones & Bartlett Learning, →ISBN, page 352:
"The server performs the server RPC runtime library functions to accept the request and call the server stub procedure. […] After this, the server stub calls the actual procedure on the server."
— 2002, Judith M. Myerson, The Complete Book of Middleware, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 7:
"A stub is usually long enough to serve as a quick definition, but too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject (see Figure 4-2)."
— 2008, John Broughton, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 66:
"I doubt not but ye ſhall have more adoe to drive out dulleſt and lazieſt youth, our ſtocks and ſtubbs from the infinite deſire of such a happy nurture, then we have now to hale and drag our choiſeſt and hopefulleſt wits to that aſinine feaſt of ſowthiſtles and brambles[.]"
— [1644], [John Milton], Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib, [London]: […] [Thomas Underhill and/or Thomas Johnson], →OCLC, page 3:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
He will ____ his toe on the doorstep if he is not careful.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Don't forget to keep your ticket ____ so that you can re-enter the stadium if you leave during the break.