stool

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A seat with legs but no back or arms.

   She sat on a tall stool at the kitchen counter.

2. 2
   noun

   Solid waste passed from the body; feces.

   The doctor asked for a stool sample to run some tests.

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Simplified etymology

In Old English, stool meant any kind of seat for one person, especially a throne. By late Middle English it could mean a seat enclosing a chamber pot and therefore a privy or lavatory. The word was then transferred to the act of going to the toilet and had become a term for faeces by the mid-16th century.

From Middle English stool, stole, stol, from Old English stōl (“chair, seat, throne”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (“chair”) (compare West Frisian stoel, Dutch stoel, German Stuhl, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish stol, Finnish tuoli, Estonian tool), from Proto-Indo-European *stoh₂los (compare Lithuanian stálas, Russian стол (stol, “table”), Russian стул (stul, “chair”), Serbo-Croatian stol (“table”), Slovene stol (“chair”), Albanian kështallë (“crutch”), Ancient Greek στήλη (stḗlē, “block of stone used as a prop or buttress to a wall”)), from *steh₂- (“to stand”). More…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary