Stuff

[David Myer]

This rather charming correspondence between me in Australia and a tour company in Cambodia got me thinking about stuff.

I wrote:

We recently undertook a trip from Siem Reap to HCM on the Jahan. Our guides suggested that it would be nice to have pencils, crayons, books etc for the school we visited with Mao (the Guide). We didn’t realise that was a sensible thing to bring – or we would have brought a whole pile of stuff with us. But we have boxes of things that we might send you from here to give to the school. I will find out how much it will cost to post – it might be more sensible to give you the postage money direct to pass on to the school so they can buy their own.

Can you please advise whether you would prefer a box of 3kg of good stuff (pens, pencils, crayons children’s books in English…) or $75?

And they responded by writing (among other things):

On behalf of the school teachers and school boys/ girls, we would like to say thank you for your kindly care of intention to give the school stuff to them.

I loved the "kindly care of intention", but they have picked up on the use of the word "stuff". I guess they looked it up and found it to be a very useful little word. I hope they continue to use it. It used to be regarded as a lazy word, a bit like "thing". We were, at school, supposed to work harder to find a word that covered more accurately what we really meant. But in this case, it seems to me that stuff is the right word.

It seems it goes back to 1400s.

[Perry Lassiter]

So what's the relation to stuff as a verb, stuffing envelopes, stuffing my backpack, etc.?

[Slava]

stuff (v.) mid-14c., "furnish with" (goods, provisions, etc.), also "reinforce" (troops), from Old French estofer "pad, upholster, fit out" (Modern French étoffer), from estoffe, and probably also in part from stuff (n.).

From c. 1400 as "fill, cram full; fill (the belly) with food or drink, gorge;" from early 15c. as "to clog" (the sinuses, etc.); from late 14c. as "fill (a mattress, etc.) with padding, line with padding;" also in the cookery sense, in reference to filing the interior of a pastry or the cavity of a fowl or beast. The ballot-box sense is attested from 1854, American English; in expressions of contempt and suggestive of bodily orifices, it dates from 1952.

stuff (n.) early 14c., "quilted material worn under chain mail," from Old French estoffe "quilted material, furniture, provisions" (Modern French étoffe), from estoffer "to equip or stock," which according to French sources is from Old High German stopfon "to plug, stuff," or from a related Frankish word (see stop (v.)), but OED has "strong objections" to this.

Sense extended to material for working with in various trades (c. 1400), then "matter of an unspecified kind" (1570s). Meaning "narcotic, dope, drug" is attested from 1929. To know (one's) stuff "have a grasp on a subject" is recorded from 1927.

Courtesy of the Online Etymological Dictionary.

[David Myer]

Splendid! Thanks for all that. These older words are interesting because they show how meanings evolve. Little nuances and inflections become whole new meanings.

This is surely a suitable candidate for Word of the Day?

[Margaretsickles]

From your forum post i could understand about you that you love old English word such as Stuff like me.

[David Myer]

Absolutely Margaret. Far more fun than the longer Latin words.