staple

Definitions

Agriculture

  • noun the length and fineness of fibres such as

    wool

    or

    cotton

    , used in determining quality

Construction

  • A double-pointed, U-shaped piece of metal used to attach wire

    mesh

    ,

    insulation

    batts,

    building paper

    , etc.; usually driven with a

    staple gun

    .

Information & Library Science

  • noun a small bent piece of metal which is forced into

    papers

    to hold them together
  • verb to join

    papers

    together using a

    stapler

Medical

  • noun a

    small

    piece of bent metal, used to attach tissues together

Real Estate

  • noun a small U-shaped piece of strong metal wire with two sharp points, usually driven into a

    surface

    to hold something such as a bolt or cable in place

Origin & History of “staple”

English

has two

distinct

words staple, but

they

come

from

a common

ancestor

– prehistoric Germanic *stapulaz ‘pillar’.

this

evolved into English staple (OE),

which

at

first

retained its ancestral meaning ‘post, pillar’. The

modern

sense ‘U-shaped metal bar’ did not emerge until the end of the 13th century, and the details of its development from ‘pillar’ are obscure. The middle Low German and Middle Dutch descendant of *stapulaz was stapel, which had the additional meaning ‘market, shop’ (presumably from the notion of a stall situated

behind

the ‘pillars’ of an arcade). This was borrowed into Old French as estaple, which in turn gave English staple ‘market’ (15th c.), hence ‘principal commercial commodity’.
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