Piece vs Stuff - What's the difference?
piece | stuff |
A part of a larger whole, usually in such a form that it is able to be separated from other parts.
A single item belonging to a class of similar items: as, for example, a piece of machinery, a piece of software.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (chess) One of the figures used in playing chess, specifically a higher-value figure as distinguished from a pawn; by extension, a similar counter etc. in other games.
* 1959 , (Hans Kmoch), Pawn Power in Chess , I:
A coin, especially one valued at less than the principal unit of currency.
An artistic creation, such as a painting, sculpture, musical composition, literary work, etc.
An artillery gun.
(US, Canada, colloquial) (short for hairpiece); a toupee or wig, usually when worn by a man.
A slice or other quantity of bread, eaten on its own; a sandwich or light snack.
* 2008 , (James Kelman), Kieron Smith, Boy , Penguin 2009, p. 46:
(US, colloquial) A gun.
(US, colloquial, vulgar) A sexual encounter; from piece of ass or piece of tail
(US, colloquial, mildly, vulgar) (short for "piece of crap") a shoddy or worthless object, usually applied to consumer products like vehicles or appliances.
(US, slang) A cannabis pipe.
(baseball) Used to describe a pitch that has been hit but not well, usually either being caught by the opposing team or going foul. Usually used in the past tense with got, and never used in the plural.
(dated, sometimes, derogatory) An individual; a person.
* Sir Philip Sidney
* Shakespeare
* Coleridge
(obsolete) A castle; a fortified building.
(US) A pacifier.
(transitive, usually, with together) To assemble (something real or figurative).
* Fuller
To make, enlarge, or repair, by the addition of a piece or pieces; to patch; often with out .
(slang) To produce a work of graffiti more complex than a tag.
* 2009 , Gregory J. Snyder, Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York's Urban Underground (page 40)
* 2009 , Scape Martinez, GRAFF: The Art & Technique of Graffiti (page 124)
Miscellaneous items; things; (with possessive) personal effects.
:
*
*:The Bat—they called him the Bat.. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
The tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object.
*Sir (c.1569-1626)
*:The workman on his stuff' his skill doth show, / And yet the ' stuff gives not the man his skill.
A material for making clothing; any woven textile, but especially a woollen fabric.
*1992 , Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p.147:
*:She was going out to buy some lengths of good woollen stuff for Louise's winter dresses.
Abstract substance or character.
*c.1599 , (William Shakespeare),
*:When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff
*c.1610 , (William Shakespeare), (The Tempest) ,
*:We are such stuff / As dreams are made on
(lb)
:
*{{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=3
, passage=It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Substitution for trivial details.
:
(lb) Narcotic drugs, especially heroin.
*1947 , William Burroughs, letter, 11 March:
*:For some idiotic reason the bureaucrats are more opposed to tea than to stuff .
Furniture; goods; domestic vessels or utensils.
*Sir (c.1564-1627)
*:He took away locks, and gave away the king's stuff .
(lb) A medicine or mixture; a potion.
:(Shakespeare)
(lb) Refuse or worthless matter; hence, also, foolish or irrational language; nonsense; trash.
*(John Dryden) (1631-1700)
*:Anger would indite / Such woeful stuff as I or Shadwell write.
(lb) A melted mass of turpentine, tallow, etc., with which the masts, sides, and bottom of a ship are smeared for lubrication.
:
Paper stock ground ready for use. When partly ground, it is called half stuff .
:(Knight)
To fill by crowding something into; to cram with something; to load to excess.
* Dryden
* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)
To fill a space with (something) in a compressed manner.
* Francis Bacon
(used in the passive) To sate.
(transitive, British, Australia, New Zealand) To be broken. (rfex)
To sexually penetrate. (rfex)
To be cut off in a race by having one's projected and committed racing line (trajectory) disturbed by an abrupt manoeuvre by a competitor.
To preserve a dead bird or animal by filling its skin.
To obstruct, as any of the organs; to affect with some obstruction in the organs of sense or respiration.
* Shakespeare
To form or fashion by packing with the necessary material.
* Jonathan Swift
(dated) To crowd with facts; to cram the mind of; sometimes, to crowd or fill with false or idle tales or fancies.
As nouns the difference between piece and stuff
is that piece is room (in a house, etc) while stuff is living room.piece
English
Alternative forms
* peece (obsolete)Noun
(en noun)Welcome to the plastisphere, passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, […].}}
- Pawns, unlike pieces , move only in one direction: forward.
- a sixpenny piece
- My grannie came and gived them all a piece and jam and cups of water then I was to bring them back out to the street and play a game.
- If I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him.
- Thy mother was a piece of virtue.
- His own spirit is as unsettled a piece as there is in all the world.
- (Spenser)
Synonyms
* See also * See alsoUsage notes
When used as a baseball term, the term is idiomatic in that the baseball is almost never broken into pieces. It is rare in modern baseball for the cover of a baseball to even partially tear loose. In professional baseball, several new, not previously played baseballs are used in each game. It could be argued that the phrase was never meant (not even metaphorically) to refer to breaking the ball into pieces, and that "get a piece of the ball" means the bat contacts only a small area of the ball - in other words, that the ball is hit off-center. In that case "get" would mean "succeed in hitting", not "obtain".Derived terms
* bits and pieces * piecemeal * piecen * piece of cake * piece of eight * piece of the actionSee also
*See also
* chunk * bitVerb
(piec)- These clues allowed us to piece together the solution to the mystery.
- His adversaries pieced themselves together in a joint opposition against him.
- to piece a garment
- (Shakespeare)
- It is incorrect to say that toys tag and masters piece ; toys just do bad tags, bad throw-ups, and bad pieces.
- It is often used to collect other writer's tags, and future plans for bombing and piecing .
Derived terms
* piece together * repiece * unpiece 1000 English basic words ----stuff
English
(wikipedia stuff)Noun
(en-noun)George Goodchild
Yesterday’s fuel, passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).}}
Usage notes
* The textile sense is increasingly specialized and sounds dated in everyday contexts.Verb
(en verb)- She stuffed the turkey for Thanksgiving using her secret stuffing recipe.
- Lest the gods, for sin, / Should with a swelling dropsy stuff thy skin.
- The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.
- He stuffed his clothes into the closet and shut the door.
- Put roses into a glass with a narrow mouth, stuffing them close together and they retain smell and colour.
- I’m stuffed after having eaten all that turkey, mashed potatoes and delicious stuffing.
- I got stuffed by that guy on the supermoto going into that turn, almost causing us to crash.
- I'm stuffed , cousin; I cannot smell.
- An Eastern king put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion, and placed upon the tribunal.