stool
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "stool", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "stool" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "stool" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
stool is aEnglishnoun. It means: A seat, especially for one person and without armrests. Pronounced /stuːl/. Often confused with stop and stow.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stool |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stuːl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #14,641 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stool is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stuːl/. Corpus data places it at rank #14,641 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for stool, with forms such as "sotol", "sstool", and "stol". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "stop", "stow", "story", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English stool, stole, stol, from Old English stōl (“chair, seat, throne”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (“chair”) (compare West Frisian stoel, Dutch stoel, German Stuhl, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish stol, Finnish tuoli… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is stool, spelled S-T-O-O-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- 2A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- 3A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- 4A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- 5A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
- 6A close-stool; a seat used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot, commode, outhouse seat, or toilet.
- 7A plant that has been cut down until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.
- 8Feces, excrement.
- 9A production of feces or excrement, an act of defecation, stooling.
- 10A decoy; a portable piece of wood to which a pigeon is fastened to lure wild birds.
- 11A small channel on the side of a vessel, for the deadeyes of the backstays.
- 12Material, such as oyster shells, spread on the sea bottom for oyster spat to adhere to.
Etymology
From Middle English stool, stole, stol, from Old English stōl (“chair, seat, throne”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōl, from Proto-Germanic *stōlaz (“chair”) (compare West Frisian stoel, Dutch stoel, German Stuhl, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish stol, Finnish tuoli, Estonian tool), from Proto-Indo-European *stoh₂los (compare Lithuanian stálas, Russian стол (stol, “table”), Russian стул (stul, “chair”), Serbo-Croatian stol (“table”), Slovene stol (“chair”), Albanian kështallë (“crutch”), Ancient Greek στήλη (stḗlē, “block of stone used as a prop or buttress to a wall”)), from *steh₂- (“to stand”). More at stand. The medical use derives from sense 2 (seat used for defecation).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sotol,sstool,stol,stolo,stooll,sttool,tsool
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for stool
Misspelling Variants of "stool"
Frequency rank: #14,641 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: