Poke vs Stuff - What's the difference?
poke | stuff |
To prod or jab with a pointed object such as a finger or a stick.
* {{quote-news
, year=2010
, date=December 29
, author=Sam Sheringham
, title=Liverpool 0 - 1 Wolverhampton
, work=BBC
To poke a fire to remove ash or promote burning.
(figuratively) To rummage as in to poke about in.
(computing) To modify the value stored in (a memory address).
* 1984 , Franco Frey, SPECGRAFFITI'' (in ''Crash magazine, issue 6, July 1984)
* 1985 , Tom Weishaar, Bert Kersey, The DOStalk Scrapbook (page 44)
To put a poke on.
To thrust with the horns; to gore.
(informal, internet) To notify.
(label) To thrust (something) in a particular direction such as the tongue.
(US, slang) A lazy person; a dawdler.
(US, slang) A stupid or uninteresting person.
(US) A device to prevent an animal from leaping or breaking through fences, consisting of a yoke with a pole inserted, pointed forward.
(computing) The storage of a value in a memory address, typically to modify the behaviour of a program or to cheat at a video game.
* 1988 , "Lloyd Mangram", Forum'' (in ''Crash magazine issue 54, July 1988)
* c. 1386 , , The Canterbury Tales'',
* c. 1599 , ,
* 1605 , ,
* 1627 , ,
* 1814 , September 4,
* 1946 , Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues , Payback Press 1999, p. 91:
* 2008 , (James Kelman), Kieron Smith, Boy , Penguin 2009, p. 138:
A long, wide sleeve; a poke sleeve.
(Scotland, Northern Ireland) An ice cream cone.
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 poke and stuff
is that poke is (us|slang) a lazy person; a dawdler or poke can be or poke can be (dialectal) pokeweed while stuff is living room.As a verb poke
is to prod or jab with a pointed object such as a finger or a stick.poke
English
Etymology 1
Perhaps from (etyl) poken or (etyl) poken (both from (etyl) ), perhaps imitative.Verb
(pok)citation, page= , passage=Ward showed good pace to beat the advancing Reina to the ball and poke a low finish into the corner.}}
- The 200 UDGs may be used either by paging between 10 sets of 20 UDGs or, alternatively, by displaying 96 different characters by poking the system variable CHARS with 256 less than the starting address of your graphics.
- If you try to poke a value outside this range into a byte, Basic will beep you with an ILLEGAL QUANTITY error.
- to poke an ox
Derived terms
{{der3, poke along , poke bonnet , poke box , poke fun , toepoke}}Noun
(en noun)- (Bartlett)
- Perhaps all those super hackers who so regularly produce infinite lives etc. could produce pokes to be used by 128K users.
Etymology 2
From (etyl) poke, whence pocketNoun
(en noun)''The Miller's Prologue and Tale:
- Gerveys answerde, “Certes, were it gold,
Or in a poke nobles alle untold,
Thou sholdest have, as I am trewe smyth.
As You Like It , act 2, scene 7:
- And then he drew a dial from his poke ,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, ‘It is ten o'clock…’
Remaines Concerning Brittaine'', 1629 edition, ''Proverbes , page 276:
- When the Pig is proffered, hold vp the poke .
Minor Poems of Michael Drayton'', 1907 edition, poem ''Nimphidia :
- And suddainly vntyes the Poke ,
Which out of it sent such a smoke,
As ready was them all to choke,
So greeuous was the pother [...].
The Examiner'', volume 13, number 349, article ''French Fashions , page 573:
- … and as to shape , a nightmare has as much. Under the poke and the muff-box, the face sometimes entirely disappears …
- In the summertime they'd reach out and snatch your straw hat right off your head, and if you were fool enough to go after it your poke was bound to be lighter when you came out.
- She did not eat blood-oranges. Her maw gived her one in a poke and she was going to throw it in the bin, Oh it is all black.
Derived terms
* buy a pig in a poke * pocketEtymology 3
Either a shortening of, or from the same source as, (quod vide).Synonyms
* see the list at (pokeweed)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.