Stook

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /stʊk/

Definitions

1. A collection of upright sheaves of grain intended for drying
2. A method involving the assembly of harvested cereal bundles positioned vertically to protect them from the elements
3. A group of grain sheaves stood vertically in a field to dry after harvest

Etymology: A stook is a shock of harvested grain sheaves stood upright in the field so they can dry out before carting. The word's surprise lies in its vowel: by regular sound change it should have come out as "stuck", the way "duck" and "suck" did, but it took its vowel from northern English dialects, which is why it sounds the way it does today. Its ancestry runs back to a sense of pushing and pounding. Middle English had "stowk" and "stouke" for a bundle of grain, probably taken from Middle Low German "stûke", and that German word was linked to a verb meaning to push, bump or compress. The idea was of grain pressed together into a tight bundle, not of standing it up. The same root shows up across the Germanic languages in words for compressing and bumping: Dutch "stuiken" means to bundle or stamp, German "stauchen" means to compress, and Swedish "stuka" means to rick or wrench. The field-harvest sense seems to have belonged to the bundle itself, with the verb use following from it.