Stunt

How to spell stunt

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stunt

What does stunt mean?

1. nounA difficult, dangerous, or unusual feat performed to entertain an audience or attract attention.
2. verbTo slow or prevent the normal growth or development of something.

Stunt in a sentence

• noun

  The film's most dangerous stunt involved a leap between two rooftops.

• verb

  A lack of sunlight can stunt the young seedlings.

• noun

  The brand pulled a clever publicity stunt to launch the product.

• verb

  Poor nutrition may stunt a child's physical development.

Where does stunt come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word actually covers two strands that fell together in the same spelling. The older strand is the sense 'to check or hinder growth', which traces back to the Old English adjective stunt, meaning 'dull, foolish, or short', and to the related Old Norse stuttr, meaning 'short'. From that idea of being cut short came the notion of growth that is held back or never reaches its full size, a use that became common in regional English by the 1500s and 1600s. The newer strand is the familiar noun for a daring feat, which surfaced in late nineteenth-century American college and athletic slang; its precise source is genuinely uncertain, though some link it playfully to 'stump' or to the older 'stunt'. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, the only thing a writer really needs to remember is that the two quite separate meanings share one tidy four-letter form.

How the word is built

• stunt (single root; no affixes)