Stud

How to spell stud

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stud

What does stud mean?

1. nounAn upright timber or metal support in the frame of a wall to which boards or plaster are fixed.
2. nounA male animal, especially a horse, kept for breeding.
3. nounA small knob, nail, or fastener that projects from a surface, including a simple earring.

Stud in a sentence

• The electrician drilled into a wooden stud behind the plaster.

• The champion stallion was retired from racing and kept as a stud.

• She wore a tiny diamond stud in each ear for the interview.

• A magnetic detector helped him locate each stud before hanging the shelf.

• The farm earned good fees by hiring out its prize bull as a stud.

• A single brass stud had come loose from the leather jacket.

Where does stud come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This short word actually braids together two Old English ancestors that happened to converge on the same modern spelling. The building sense descends from Old English 'studu', meaning a post or upright timber, a word from the broader Germanic family connected to ideas of standing firm and propping something up. The horse-breeding sense comes instead from Old English 'stod', which named a herd of horses or the place where they were kept for breeding, and that word is closely related to 'stand' and to the German 'Stute', meaning a mare. Over the centuries the senses multiplied: a small projecting knob or ornamental nail came to be called a stud because it stood out from a surface, and from that grew the modern collar stud and earring stud. The breeding line of meaning later gave English the slang use for a notably virile or attractive man. Because both Old English roots were already so plain and short, the spelling has stayed wonderfully simple, which is why almost nobody misspells it.

How the word is built

• Single morpheme from Old English; no prefix or suffix (root 'stud', from studu 'post' / stōd 'breeding stock')