Staple

How to spell staple

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce staple

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does staple mean?

1. nounA small piece of bent wire pushed through paper and clinched to hold sheets together, or a U-shaped metal fastening driven into a surface.
2. verbTo fasten or attach material together using a staple or staples.
3. adjectiveA basic, principal item that is in constant use or supply, especially a main food or commodity.

Staple in a sentence

• noun

  A single staple held the two pages of the contract together.

• verb

  Please staple the receipt to the expense form before filing it.

• adjective

  Rice is a staple food across much of the region.

• noun

  He hammered a staple into the post to secure the loose wire fence.

• verb

  She used the heavy gun to staple the fabric to the underside of the chair.

• adjective

  The corner shop keeps every household staple in stock.

Where does staple come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word actually braids together two separate threads that ended up spelled the same way. The fastener and 'post' sense descends from the Old English stapol, meaning a post or pillar, a fixed upright thing driven into the ground; from that idea of a small bent piece of metal driven in to hold something came the modern paper fastener and the U-shaped wire that secures fencing. The quite different sense of a 'main commodity' or 'staple food' comes from the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German stapel, meaning a heap, storehouse, or appointed market, which entered English through the Old French estaple during the 1300s. A medieval staple was an official town where a particular trade good, such as wool, had to be brought and sold, so the staple goods were the principal commodities of that market. From there the adjective drifted to mean anything essential or regularly used. The shared modern spelling masks these two unrelated origins, which is part of why the word covers such a wide spread of meanings.

How the word is built

• staple (from Old English stapol: post, pillar); the 'main commodity' sense from Middle Dutch/Low German stapel: storehouse, market