stool

A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.

Noun

  1. A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.

    Hypernyms: seat

    Coordinate Terms: chair

    1. A seat for one person without a back or armrests.

    2. A footstool.

      Hypernyms: seat

      Coordinate Terms: chair

    3. (now chiefly dialectal, Scotland) A seat with a back; a chair.

      Hypernyms: seat

      Coordinate Terms: chair

    4. (now chiefly dialectal, Scotland, literally and figuratively) A throne.

      Hypernyms: seat

      Coordinate Terms: chair

    5. (West Africa) A royal seat; a chief's throne.

      Hypernyms: seat

      Coordinate Terms: chair

  2. A close-stool; a seat used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot, commode, outhouse seat, or toilet.

    Synonyms: can chamber chamber pot chemical toilet commode Cousin John crapper gazunder guzunder honey bucket honeypot Jerry jerry john johnny jordan latrine mingo necessary stool pan pee pot pisspot piss pot po

  3. A plant that has been cut down until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.
    • The ground in almost every part of it is covered with stools or stems of Oak, at not more than three feet stool from stool, and these not having been thinned since last cutting, are completely overburdened, and are...
    • With stool bedding, the plants are pruned back to the ground in the dormant season, and the shoots that form in the spring have juvenile characteristics and are called "juvenile reversion shoots." Stool bedding or stool...
    • A coppice may be large, in which case trees, usually ash (Fraxinus) or maple (Acer) are cut, leaving a massive stool from which up to 10 trunks arise; or small, in which case trees, usually hazel (Corylus), hawthorn...
  4. Feces, excrement.
    • I provided the doctor with stool samples.
    • The diagnostic criteria for infant dyschezia are at least 10 minutes of straining and crying before successful passage of soft stools in an otherwise healthy infant less than six months of age. In a child with infant...
    • Two days prior to the consultation, an abdominal radiograph was done because the patient hadn't stooled in a week. No signs of obstruction and no abnormal accumulations of stool were found. - 2014, David R. Fleisher,...

    Synonyms: boo-boo boom-boom BM bowel movement caca cack chocolate chocolate hot dog crap crud danna dejection dirt do do doo-doo doody dook dookie dooky droppings dump dumplings dung Eartha

  5. A production of feces or excrement, an act of defecation, stooling.
    • Normal stooling is widely variant. Some infants only have one stool per day, especially those on formula feeding. Others may stool with each feeding. Such frequent stooling is common in breast-fed infants during the...

    Synonyms: big jobs bowel movement cack call of nature crap crapping defecating defecation doing one's ease doing one's easement dump dumping easement hod motion number two poo pooh poop purging sharn shit shitting spraying

  6. A decoy; a portable piece of wood to which a pigeon is fastened to lure wild birds.
  7. A small channel on the side of a vessel, for the deadeyes of the backstays.
    • the fore backstay deadeyes and stool had to be lowered 2 feet - 1972, The Mariner's Mirror:
  8. Material, such as oyster shells, spread on the sea bottom for oyster spat to adhere to.

Origin

From Middle English stool, from Old English stōl (“chair, seat”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (“chair”), from Proto-Indo-European *stoh₂los (“frame, rack, stand”), from *steh₂- (“to stand”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian stuul, stölj, Stööl (“chear”), Saterland Frisian Stoul (“chear”), West Frisian stoel (“chair, seat”), Dutch stoel (“chair”), German Stuhl (“chair”), Low German Stohl (“chair”), Luxembourgish Stull (“chair”), Vilamovian śtül (“chair”), Yiddish שתוהל (shsuhl), שטול (shtul, “chair”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish stol (“chair”), Faroese stólur (“chair”), Icelandic stóll (“chair”), Crimean Gothic stul (“seat”), Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐍉𐌻𐍃 (stōls, “chair; throne”), Russian стул (stul, “chair”), Estonian tool (“chair”), Finnish tuoli (“chair”); also Breton and Cornish sevel (“to erect, rise; to build; to lift; to compose; to...

Forms

stools stoole

Derived

bar stool birth stool birthstool Bristol stool chart Bristol stool scale camp stool campstool close stool closestool cucking stool cutler's stool cuttystool destool donkey stool ducking stool enstool footstool frith stool frithstool groom of the stool joint-stool kickstool litany stool necessary stool

Noun alt of, alternative

  1. Alternative form of stole (“plant from which layers are propagated by bending its branches into the soil; stolon.”).
    • The process of layering is well known: it consists in bending a young branch […] into the soil to a certain depth, and elevating the top part of it out of the soil in an upright direction; in time the buried part takes...
    • Soon after harvest, new shoots emerge from axillary buds on the stubble and give rise to the ratoon crop. Initially the young shoots are dependent upon the roots of the previous crop (stool roots) but these are replaced...

Origin

From Latin stolo. See stolon.

Forms

stools

Verb medicine, sciences

  1. To produce stool: to defecate.
    • Infrequent stooling in the first month of life is almost always due to insufficient intake of milk. A baby who is voiding but not stooling or gaining weight may not be receiving enough high fat hindmilk. Stooling...
    • Normal stooling is widely variant. Some infants only have one stool per day, especially those on formula feeding. Others may stool with each feeding. Such frequent stooling is common in breast-fed infants during the...
    • Two days prior to the consultation, an abdominal radiograph was done because the patient hadn't stooled in a week. No signs of obstruction and no abnormal accumulations of stool were found. - 2014, David R. Fleisher,...
  2. To cut down (a plant) until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.
    • Cutting back to the same position annually is usually referred to as pollarding; cutting nearly to the ground is usually called stooling. Both are good methods of controlling height and maintaining vigor on plants that...
    • The healthier of your two hollies is multi-stemmed, indicating that it was once stooled (cut down to a point just above the ground). It has since grown back vigorously to become a thick, wide tree which enabled it even...

Forms

stools stooling stooled stoole

Synonyms

defecate

Verb agriculture, business

  1. To ramify; to tiller, as grain; to shoot out suckers.
    • I worked very hard in the copse of young ash, with my billhook and a shearing-knife; cutting out the saplings where they stooled too close together, making spars to keep for thatching, wall-crooks to drive into the cob,...
    • The plants stooled out well, and yielded a heavy cutting of rather tough cane. In its young state it should make good silage. - 1904, Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock, Annual Report, →OCLC, page 80:
    • In a field experiment planted in spring 1969, the red raspberry 'Glen Clova' was grown both in hedgerows and in stooled rows. Although spur blight (Didymella applanata) and cane botrytis (Botrytis cinerea) were more...

Forms

stools stooling stooled