stool

Meanings

Noun

• A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
• 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.
• A plant from which layers are propagated by bending its branches into the soil.

Verb

• 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.
• To ramify; to tiller, as grain; to shoot out suckers.

Origin

• From Middle English stool, stole, stol, from Old English stōl, from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (compare West Frisian stoel, Dutch stoel, German Stuhl, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish stol, Finnish tuoli, Estonian tool), from Proto-Indo-European *stoh₂los (compare Lithuanian stálas, Russian стол ("table"), Russian стул ("chair"), Serbo-Croatian stol ("table"), Slovene stol ("chair"), Albanian kështalle ("crutch"), Ancient Greek στήλη ("block of stone used as a prop or buttress to a wall")), from *steh₂-. More at stand.
• The medical use derives from sense 2 (seat used for defecation).
• Latin stolo. See stolon.