Stook
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A pile or bundle, especially of straw.
- 2 A group of six or eight sheaves of grain stacked to dry vertically in a rectangular arrangement at harvest time, largely obsolete since the advent of combine harvesters and powered grain driers (mid 20th century). specifically
"And on the road home they lay among the stooks and maybe Ellison did this and that to make sure of getting her, he was fair desperate for any woman by then."
- 3 A handkerchief. obsolete, slang
"Loud was the laughter at this and other remarks about nailing "stooks" (silk pocket handkerchiefs), "clouts" (cotton ditto), german sausages, &c."
- 1 To make stooks. intransitive
Example
More examples"And on the road home they lay among the stooks and maybe Ellison did this and that to make sure of getting her, he was fair desperate for any woman by then."
Etymology
From Middle English stowk, stouke, stouc, from or cognate with Middle Low German stûke (“bundle of grain”), from Middle Low German stûken (“to push, bump, compress”), from Old Saxon *stūkan, from Proto-Germanic *stūkaną (“to be stiff, push”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewg- (“to pound, push, beat”). Cognate with West Frisian stûkje (“to pile up, stop”), Dutch stuiken (“to bundle, stamp”), German stauchen (“to compress”), Swedish stuka (“to rick, wrench, upset”), Norwegian Nynorsk stauka (“to whack, chop”).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.