stir
Definitions
General English
Economics
- (written as STIR)short term interest rate
- acronym forShort term interest rate (written as STIR)
- The interest rate on any financial instrument of short maturity.
- Denoted STIR, a particular financial instrument that is a futures contract on a short term interest rate, often a 3-month interest rate in any of a variety of currencies.
Food
- verb to move a liquid or semiliquid food around so as to mix it or keep it mixed
Slang
- noun prison. Various Romany (gypsy) words such as stardo and steripen, dealing with the concept of imprisonment, gave rise to ‘start’, an 18th-century British slang term for prison, and later, in the mid-19th century, to stir, which has remained one of the most widespread words for jail or imprisonment in all English-speaking areas, particularly in the phrase ‘in stir’.
Origin & History of “stir”
The etymological connotations of stir are of ‘agitation’ and ‘disturbance’; the notion of ‘mixing a liquid with circular movements of a spoon or other implement’ is a secondary development. The verb goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *sturjan, whose only other living descendant is Norwegian styrja ‘make a disturbance’. It was formed from a base *stur-, which was probably also responsible for English storm.
