Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The usually short end remaining after something bigger has been used up.
  • noun Something cut short or arrested in development.
  • noun The part of a check or receipt retained as a record.
  • noun The part of a ticket returned as a voucher of payment.
  • noun An entry that has minimal text, no text, or has not been written in full in an online reference work.
  • transitive verb To pull up (weeds) by the roots.
  • transitive verb To clear (a field) of weeds.
  • transitive verb To strike (one's toe or foot) against something accidentally.
  • transitive verb To snuff out (a cigarette butt) by crushing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In railroading, any section or piece of track which ends at a station or a siding. The parallel tracks of the train-shed of a terminal station are stub-tracks.
  • noun The end of a fallen tree, shrub, or plant remaining in the ground; a stump; now, especially, a short stump or projecting root of inconspicuous size.
  • noun A projection like a stump; a piece or part of something sticking out: as, a dog with only a stub of a tail; the stub of a broken tooth.
  • noun A short remaining piece of something; a terminal remnant: as, the stub of a pencil or of a cigar; a stub of candle.
  • noun A worn horseshoe-nail; a stub-nail; specifically, in the plural, nails, or bits of iron of the quality of old horseshoe-nails, used as material for gun-barrels or other articles requiring great toughness.
  • noun Something truncated, resembling a small stump, or constituting a terminal remnant.
  • noun The inner end of one of the duplicate numbered blanks in a check-book or the like, which is left in the book with a memorandum corresponding to the check or other blank which is filled out and detached; counterfoil.
  • noun Figuratively, a block: a blockhead.
  • To grub up by the roots; pull or raise the stub of; pull or raise as a stub: as, to stub a tree; to Stub up roots.
  • To clear of stubs; grub up stubs or roots from, as land.
  • To make a stub of; cut to a stub; give a truncated or stubbed appearance to; truncate: as, to stub off a post or a quill pen.
  • To ruin by extravagance.
  • To strike against something projecting from a surface; stump: as, to stub one's foot.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To grub up by the roots; to extirpate.
  • transitive verb To remove stubs from.
  • transitive verb United States To strike as the toes, against a stub, stone, or other fixed object.
  • noun The stump of a tree; that part of a tree or plant which remains fixed in the earth when the stem is cut down; -- applied especially to the stump of a small tree, or shrub.
  • noun obsolete A log; a block; a blockhead.
  • noun The short blunt part of anything after larger part has been broken off or used up; hence, anything short and thick.
  • noun A part of a leaf in a check book, after a check is torn out, on which the number, amount, and destination of the check are usually recorded.
  • noun A pen with a short, blunt nib.
  • noun A stub nail; an old horseshoe nail; also, stub iron.
  • noun (Mach.) the enlarged end of a connecting rod, to which the strap is fastened.
  • noun iron made from stub nails, or old horseshoe nails, -- used in making gun barrels.
  • noun (Carp.) a mortise passing only partly through the timber in which it is formed.
  • noun an old horseshoe nail; a nail broken off; also, a short, thick nail.
  • noun (Lumber Manuf.) the part of the end of a sawn log or plank which is beyond the place where the saw kerf ends, and which retains the plank in connection with the log, until it is split off.
  • noun material for a gun barrel, made of a spirally welded ribbon of steel and stub iron combined.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Something blunted, stunted, or cut short, such as stubble or a stump.
  • noun A piece of certain paper items, designed to be torn off and kept for record or identification purposes.
  • noun A page providing only minimal information and intended for later development.
  • noun The remaining part of the docked tail of a dog
  • noun An unequal first or last interest calculation period, as a part of a financial swap contract
  • verb To remove most of a tree, bush, or other rooted plant by cutting it close to the ground.
  • verb To remove a plant by pulling it out by the roots.
  • verb To jam, hit, or bump, especially a toe.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb clear of weeds by uprooting them
  • noun a torn part of a ticket returned to the holder as a receipt

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English stubbe, tree stump, from Old English stybb.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English stubbe ("tree stump"), from Old English stybb ("tree stump") , from Proto-Germanic *stubjaz (compare Middle Dutch stubbe, Old Norse stubbr), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teu-; compare steep ("sharp slope").

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Examples

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  • One time I was on a plane and a kid said "I'm stubbing my toe!" Normally, the event is so brief, you can only talk about it in the past, but somehow this child had the presence of mind to describe the trauma while still in the middle of it.

    April 17, 2015