Stump

How to spell stump

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stump

What does stump mean?

1. nounThe bottom part of a tree trunk and its roots left in the ground after the tree has been cut down.
2. verbTo completely baffle or perplex someone so that they cannot respond or proceed.
3. nounThe short, worn-down remnant of something that has been used up or cut off.

Stump in a sentence

• noun

  After the storm, only a jagged stump remained where the oak had stood.

• verb

  The final clue in the crossword can stump even seasoned solvers.

• noun

  He sharpened the pencil down to a tiny stump.

• noun

  They hired a contractor to grind the stump down below ground level.

• verb

  A question about the missing receipts seemed to stump the whole accounts team.

• noun

  The candle had burned to a waxy stump by midnight.

Where does stump come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Stump comes from a Germanic root meaning a short, cut-off remnant, and it is closely related to the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch word 'stump', meaning a stub or stunted thing, and to the modern German 'Stumpf' with the same sense. It surfaced in English around the 1300s, originally describing the base of a tree left standing in the ground after the trunk has been felled. From that very physical image the word spread outward: a worn-down stub of anything, such as a pencil or a limb, could be called a stump. The figurative verb 'to stump', meaning to baffle or bring someone to a standstill, grew from the idea of being blocked, as a plough is blocked by tree stumps in a field. A separate American political sense, campaigning 'on the stump', recalls early speakers who literally stood on a cut tree stump to address a crowd.

How the word is built

• stump (a single Germanic root meaning a cut-off remnant or stub); no prefix or suffix