Stuff

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /stʌf/

Definitions

1. A material or substance from which things can be made ; personal belongings or items someone owns ; matters or topics being discussed or considered
2. The physical substances or materials that compose something ; an individual's possessions or things they carry ; subjects or content under discussion or thought
3. Any kind of material or substance ; various objects owned or used by a person ; issues or themes that are being addressed or talked about

Etymology: The noun "stuff" and the verb "stuff" share a single ancestor: a Germanic verb meaning "to clog up, block, fill." That idea of packing something full passed into Old French as "estoffer," meaning to equip or furnish, and the furnishing sense is what English borrowed. The verb arrived in Middle English as "stuffen," meaning to equip or furnish a person or place with what it needed, and only later narrowed toward the sense of packing a container. The noun followed a similar path through Old French "estofe," a word for material, supplies, or equipment. In Middle English it came to mean the substance that fills something, and from there it spread to the broader sense of things a person owns or carries, and to the subject matter under discussion. Each modern meaning is a short step from that original idea of filling. A thing that is stuffed is packed, and what is packed is simply the stuff.

Synonyms: things, items, materials, substances, objects

Antonyms: emptiness, nothingness