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stool

Pronunciation: /stuːl/
Translate stool | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of stool

noun

  • 1a seat without a back or arms, typically resting on three or four legs or on a single pedestal.
  • 2a piece of faeces: fibre in the child’s diet will soften the stools [mass noun]:concentrations of the substance in normal stool
  • 3a root or stump of a tree or plant from which shoots spring.
  • 4US a decoy bird in hunting.

verb

[no object]
  • (of a plant) throw up shoots from the root.
  • [with object] cut back (a plant) to or near ground level in order to induce new growth.

Phrases

at stool

Medicine when defecating: it may be induced by a hard bowel movement or straining at stool

fall between two stools

British fail to be or take one of two satisfactory alternatives: the work fell between two stools, being neither genuinely popular nor truly scholarly

Origin:

Old English, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch stoel, German Stuhl, also to stand. Current senses of the verb date from the late 18th century

stool in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of stool in the US English dictionary

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