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stuff

[stuhf]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

the material of which anything is made: a hard, crystalline stuff.

material to be worked upon or to be used in making something: wood, steel, and other stuff for building.

material of some unspecified kind: a cushion filled with some soft stuff.

Chiefly British. woven material or fabric, especially wool.

property, as personal belongings or equipment; things.

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something to be swallowed, as food, drink, or medicine.

inward character, qualities, or capabilities: to have good stuff in one.

Informal. action or talk of a particular kind: kid stuff; Cut out the rough stuff.

worthless things or matter: to clean the stuff out of a closet.

10.

worthless or foolish ideas, talk, or writing: a lot of stuff and nonsense.

11.

Sports.

Baseball. the assortment of pitches that a pitcher uses in a game together with the ability to deliver them in the proper manner at the right speed to the desired spot: He saved his best stuff for the tougher hitters in the lineup.

spin or speed imparted to a ball, as by a baseball pitcher, a bowler, or a tennis player: a pitch with plenty of stuff.

12.

Informal. journalistic, literary, artistic, dramatic, musical, or other compositions or performances: Bach composed some splendid stuff.

13.

Informal. one's trade, skill, field, facts, etc.: She knows her stuff.

14.

Slang. any kind of drug, especially an illicit one.

15.

Also called stock. Papermaking. refined and beaten wet pulp ready for spreading on the wire.

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verb (used with object)

16.

to fill (a receptacle), especially by packing the contents closely together; cram full.

17.

to fill (an aperture, cavity, etc.) by forcing something into it.

18.

to fill or line with some kind of material as a padding or packing.

19.

to fill or cram (oneself, one's stomach, etc.) with food.

20.

to fill (meat, vegetables, etc.) with seasoned bread crumbs or other savory matter.

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21.

to fill the preserved skin of (a dead animal) with material, retaining its natural form and appearance for display.

22.

to put fraudulent votes into (a ballot box).

23.

to thrust or cram (something) into a receptacle, cavity, or the like.

24.

to pack tightly in a confined place; crowd together.

25.

to crowd (a vehicle, room, etc.) with persons.

26.

to clutter or fill (the mind) with facts, details, etc.

27.

(in leather manufacturing) to treat (a skin, hide, etc.) with a composition of tallow and other ingredients.

28.

to stop up or plug; block or choke (usually followed by up).

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Stuff is one of our favorite verbs.

So is peculate. Does it mean:

to steal or take dishonestly (money, esp. public funds, or property entrusted to one's care); embezzle.

chat, to converse

LEARN MORE FUN, UNUSUAL VERBS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

verb (used without object)

29.

to cram oneself with food; eat gluttonously; gorge.

Origin:
1300–50; (v.) late Middle English stuffen to equip, furnish < Old French estoffer literally, to stuff < Frankish *stopfōn, *stoppōn (see stop); (noun) Middle English < Old French estoffe, derivative of the v.

Related forms

stuff·less, adjective

re·stuff, verb (used with object)

un·der·stuff, verb (used with object)

un·stuff, verb (used with object)

un·stuffed, adjective

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well-stuffed, adjective

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Synonyms
1, 2, 3. See matter. 9. waste, rubbish, trash. 10. nonsense, twaddle, claptrap, balderdash. 23. press, stow. 28. obstruct.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To stuff

Example Sentences

IN almost every instance the sole reason to stuff one food with another is appearance.

One of his research fellows was producing exciting data, the kind of stuff that could shake up a field.

The best stuff is not always the latest stuff, after all.

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IN almost every instance the sole reason to stuff one food with another is appearance.

One of his research fellows was producing exciting data, the kind of stuff that could shake up a field.

The best stuff is not always the latest stuff, after all.

One of the best ways to conserve water is to buy recycled goods, and to recycle your stuff when you're done with it.

Everybody trying to grow stuff has all the same challenges.

They are composed not of keratin, the stuff of fingernails, but of bone.

Gives you a mission, and they're small enough to stuff in a pocket.

Stuff to be set in motion and stuff you could move yourself.

The move puts colleges at odds with major food corporations and with a public that buys the stuff in record amounts every year.

These figures are the stuff that nasty movements are made of.

But for one week each year, they stop to dance and strut their stuff.

Theoretical walker struts its energy-efficient stuff.

But you would not, of your own volition, spend an entire weekend drinking the stuff.

Stuff fresh poblano chiles with corn, jalapeño, and jack cheese polenta.

It's incredible to me that this stuff is even possible.

There's only so much tangible stuff any of us need, can use, will enjoy.

Although no one knew what the stuff is made of or how it works, scientists could see from its effects that it is out there.

They put this stuff next to schools, sludge ponds are polluting the water systems.

They'd turn it into new cardboard boxes to hold the manufactured stuff they shipped to us.

Of the stuff that appears only in daydreams and movies best viewed under the influence of drugs.

What goes for crude oil also applies to the stuff squeezed out of vegetable matter.

Surely there will be a black market for this type of stuff.

For some people, this is cause to pinpoint the products that use the stuff.

Once this stuff goes on the garden, my plants are going to be so happy and healthy that it will all be worth it.

You've seen the movies, now see the stuff that was in the movies.

As the hardest substance known, diamond is ideal for cutting rock and other tough stuff.

It's the stuff of science fiction: paralysis at the flip of a switch.

Stuff with sliced fontina cheese and roasted red peppers.

The first types is stuff they say without being prepared.

Of course, drink enough of the stuff and it really won't matter how tightly caged it is.

His sailors, meanwhile, feared that their ships would become irretrievably entangled in the stuff.

One taste will probably make you swear off the commercial stuff forever.

But this stuff is deffinetly interestinggg anyy onn here sees my stuff and knowss me comment backk.

Good food, great scenery, all that stuff right out of the advertising brochures.

I've already heard from the caving community that the stuff could make a great cave suit, knee pads, cave pack.

Here is a neat blog about high-end expensive stuff for rich people only.

Rockets have to be made with less stuff that can fall off and be lost.

So now my new favorite is those pumpkins that are made out of the same stuff as candy corn.

Another way of rescuing less popular stuff is to charge more for it.

O chicken new world, that has such weird stuff in it.

Three ways to stuff a pocket, and please every palate.

In the face of evidence that jam-packed stores encourage sales, retailers are redesigning their space to stuff in more displays.

It puts the unwanted stuff into the hands of those who need.

Stuff the pillow filling into the open side until the pillow is firm.

Find the perfect bike for your commute, and the perfect bike bag or basket to carry your stuff in.

The brown stuff is the recycled cookign oil the jet fuel is produced.

Short, because committee members don't want to spend hours reading stuff that honestly isn't that.

Book readers may be an unusually honest lot, but they are not above getting stuff for nothing.

When stuff blows up or systems don't work right, you've got yourself an experiment.

The right stuff may be a critical requirement for astronauts.

It doesn't have everything in it, but it has the important stuff organized so it's much easier to find.

Britain, the world's biggest chocolate-eater, seems to be going off the stuff.

Mathematical trickery borrowed from string theory raises hopes of understanding the densest stuff in the universe.

It may be tough to get a grant through to test any of this stuff.

Back to the stuff about vesting: of course you always own your own money.

Well maybe not quite, still potentially earth shattering stuff.

Or you could avoid sweating the small stuff altogether.

Tame stuff by today's standards but novel enough, back then, to gain notice.

It is the soufflé that reveals whether you've got the stuff to whisk your way to culinary respectableness.

The store-bought stuff also tastes better that way too.

Congressmen spend every waking minute raising the stuff.

The point is, it's far better if the stuff doesn't get into the ocean in the first place.

Stuff a few pieces of blue cheese into the cut top of each fig.

I've sort of been cheating on you and writing a bunch of gardening stuff on our other garden blog.

I've heard really interesting stuff that way, and you get a sense of who the hams are going to be right away.

Some is the synthetic stuff used in oral contraceptives.

But what do you do if all you have is whatever you're able to stuff in your dorm and the cafeteria is.

The first few days really suck, but by a week in you'll wonder why you ever wanted taht stuff in the first place.

Understandably, the government does not want militarily useful stuff to fall into the hands of its foes.

The residues of the cores are near the moon surface, and released some amount of that stuff.

The problem is that the amount you pay in premiums is usually more than you would pay for the stuff it covers.

As many as four litres of water are used to make a litre of the bottled stuff.

After all, roads would not be coated in the stuff if a slick biofilm of bacteria was going to form on them.

After all, rebelliousness can be the stuff of creativity in filmmaking, graphic art and design.

Behold a few glimpses of the amazing stuff they're doing.

But you don't get the stuff in the margins-important traces of how people thought-from the typical clean digital scans.

Like helping us to accomplish the stuff you hold being the future.

But you need to know that some mean stuff is going down.

It can be used to describe a person who spends an inordinate amount of time trying to get stuff for free.

All that other stuff was supposed to be learned before you got here.

These researchers have made the dark stuff theory more plausible.

You, using less gas and buying less stuff will rebuild the ozone.

There was the flat stuff that grows directly on concrete.

Everyone is suffocating under the weight of owning too much stuff.

Turn off the electricity and the stuff sucks heat back.

Tony has been doing this kind of work for a long time, and the man knows his stuff.

Who is successful at staunching the flow of stuff coming into the home.

Some tombs and city walls that were reinforced with the stuff are still standing.

And of course, there's also lots of stuff to buy for the bees.

Remind them that parsing sentences might help them understand the stuff in their textbooks.

Sample it before you buy to make sure you're getting the good stuff.

Kalamata olives and sundried tomatoes make this pasta salad stand out from the store-bought stuff.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

stuff (stʌf)

—vb
1.	to pack or fill completely; cram
2.	(intr) to eat large quantities
3.	to force, shove, or squeeze: to stuff money into a pocket
4.	to fill (food such as poultry or tomatoes) with a stuffing
5.	to fill (an animal's skin) with material so as to restore the shape of the live animal
6.	slang to have sexual intercourse with (a woman)
7.	tanning to treat (an animal skin or hide) with grease
8.	(US), (Canadian) to fill (a ballot box) with a large number of fraudulent votes
9.	See also stuffing and stripping (in marine transport) to pack (a container)
10.	slang to ruin, frustrate, or defeat

—n
11.	the raw material or fabric of something
12.	woollen cloth or fabric
13.	any general or unspecified substance or accumulation of objects
14.	stupid or worthless actions, speech, ideas, etc
15.	subject matter, skill, etc: he knows his stuff
16.	a slang word for money
17.	slang a drug, esp cannabis
18.	slang (Brit) a girl or woman considered sexually (esp in the phrase bit of stuff)
19.	informal do one's stuff to do what is expected of one
20.	that's the stuff that is what is needed

[C14: from Old French estoffe, from estoffer to furnish, provide, of Germanic origin; related to Middle High German stopfen to cram full]

usage Sense 6 of this word was formerly considered to be taboo, and it was labelled as such in previous editions of Collins English Dictionary. However, it has now become acceptable in speech, although some older or more conservative people may object to its use

'stuffer

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

stuff

early 14c., "quilted material worn under chain mail," from O.Fr. estoffe "quilted material, furniture, provisions" (Fr. étoffe), from estoffer "to equip or stock," probably from O.H.G. stopfon "to plug, stuff," or from a related Frankish word (see stop). Sense extended

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to material for working with in various trades (c.1400), then (1570s) "matter of an unspecified kind." Meaning "narcotic, dope, drug" is attested from 1929. To know (one's) stuff "have a grasp on a subject" is recorded from 1927. stuffy "poorly ventilated" is from 1831; sense of "pompous, smug" is from 1895.

stuff

1440, "to cram full," from stuff (n.); earlier "to furnish a fort or army with men and stores" (c.1300). The ballot-box sense is attested from 1854, Amer.Eng.; in expressions of contempt and suggestive of bodily orifices, it dates from 1952. Stuffing "seasoned mixture used

to stuff fowls before cooking" is from 1538. Stuffed in ref. to garments, "padded with stuffing" is from 1467; hence stuffed shirt "pompous, ineffectual person" (1913).

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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

stuff

In addition to the idioms beginning with stuff, also see get stuffed; hot number (stuff); kid stuff; know one's stuff; strut one's stuff.