stool

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
2. (countable, uncountable)A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
3. (Scotland, countable, dialectal, uncountable)A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
4. (Scotland, countable, dialectal, figuratively, literally, uncountable)A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
5. (Africa, West, countable, uncountable)A seat, especially for one person and without armrests.
6. (countable, dated, uncountable)A close-stool; a seat used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot, commode, outhouse seat, or toilet.
7. (countable, uncountable)A plant that has been cut down until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.

   “The ground in almost every part of it is covered with stools or stems of Oak, at not more than three feet stool from stool, and these not having been thinned since last cutting, are completely overburdened, and are evidently killing each other and dying for want of nourishment […]”

8. (countable, uncountable)Feces, excrement.

   “I provided the doctor with stool samples.”

   “The diagnostic criteria for infant dyschezia are at least 10 minutes of straining and crying before successful passage of soft stools in an otherwise healthy infant less than six months of age. In a child with infant dyschezia, physical examination and stool examination are normal.”

   “Two days prior to the consultation, an abdominal radiograph was done because the patient hadn't stooled in a week. No signs of obstruction and no abnormal accumulations of stool were found.”

9. (countable, uncountable)A production of feces or excrement, an act of defecation, stooling.

   “Normal stooling is widely variant. Some infants only have one stool per day, especially those on formula feeding. Others may stool with each feeding. Such frequent stooling is common in breast-fed infants during the first month of life.”

10. (archaic, countable, uncountable)A decoy; a portable piece of wood to which a pigeon is fastened to lure wild birds.
11. (countable, uncountable)A small channel on the side of a vessel, for the deadeyes of the backstays.

    “the fore backstay deadeyes and stool had to be lowered 2 feet”

12. (US, countable, dialectal, uncountable)Material, such as oyster shells, spread on the sea bottom for oyster spat to adhere to.
13. (alt-of, alternative, rare)Alternative form of stole (“plant from which layers are propagated by bending its branches into the soil; stolon.”).

    “Soon after harvest, new shoots emerge from axillary buds on the stubble and give rise to the ratoon crop. Initially the young shoots are dependent upon the roots of the previous crop (stool roots) but these are replaced by new shoot roots […].”

verb

1. To produce stool: to defecate.

   “Infrequent stooling in the first month of life is almost always due to insufficient intake of milk. A baby who is voiding but not stooling or gaining weight may not be receiving enough high fat hindmilk. Stooling frequency will correct itself with additional feeds or making sure the infant receives more hind milk at a feed.”

   “Normal stooling is widely variant. Some infants only have one stool per day, especially those on formula feeding. Others may stool with each feeding. Such frequent stooling is common in breast-fed infants during the first month of life.”

   “Two days prior to the consultation, an abdominal radiograph was done because the patient hadn't stooled in a week. No signs of obstruction and no abnormal accumulations of stool were found.”

2. To cut down (a plant) until its main stem is close to the ground, resembling a stool, to promote new growth.

   “Cutting back to the same position annually is usually referred to as pollarding; cutting nearly to the ground is usually called stooling. Both are good methods of controlling height and maintaining vigor on plants that would normally grow to a large size. […] Those [plants] that generate many small stems crowded together are difficult to pollard so they are normally stooled. Some people refer to stooling as coppice.”

   “The healthier of your two hollies is multi-stemmed, indicating that it was once stooled (cut down to a point just above the ground). It has since grown back vigorously to become a thick, wide tree which enabled it even more to overshadow the one that you say was quite severely pruned last year.”

3. To ramify; to tiller, as grain; to shoot out suckers.

   “I worked very hard in the copse of young ash, with my billhook and a shearing-knife; cutting out the saplings where they stooled too close together, making spars to keep for thatching, wall-crooks to drive into the cob, stiles for close sheep hurdles, and handles for rakes, and hoes, and two-bills, of the larger and straighter stuff.”

   “The plants stooled out well, and yielded a heavy cutting of rather tough cane. In its young state it should make good silage.”

   “In a field experiment planted in spring 1969, the red raspberry 'Glen Clova' was grown both in hedgerows and in stooled rows. Although spur blight (Didymella applanata) and cane botrytis (Botrytis cinerea) were more frequent on canes removed as thinnings from the hedgerows than on those removed from stooled plots, the differences were trivial.”