Literary notes about stub (AI summary)
The word "stub" unfolds with remarkable versatility in literature. It frequently denotes a truncated remnant—a small part left over from a larger whole—as when a tail is reduced to a meager, active appendage [1] or when a cigarette is reduced to just its stub, symbolizing a character’s habitual melancholy or resignation [2, 3]. At other times it marks physical endpoints or truncated objects, such as a tree’s decayed trunk top [4, 5] or the stub of a pencil used for writing important notes [6, 7, 8]. Even in dialogue, the term enriches everyday language, serving as a vivid metaphor for accidents like stubbing a toe [9, 10, 11] or as an affectionate nickname [12]. This multi-layered usage underscores the word's ability to infuse narrative and characterization with both precision and a touch of colloquial charm.
- She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks.
— from White Fang by Jack London - “I am a connoisseur,” said he, taking another cigarette from the box—his fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - Embury lighted one cigarette from the stub of another, and deposited the stub in the ash-tray at his elbow.
— from Raspberry Jam by Carolyn Wells - For its nesting place it usually selects the decayed trunk of a tree or stub, ranging all the way from two to sixty feet above the ground.
— from Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 2, No. 3 September 1897 by Various - About twelve feet from the ground he cut off the trunk just above the place where a good stout limb stub formed a convenient crotch.
— from Connie Morgan in the Fur Country by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx - He laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil, and wrote the words on his cuff.
— from Through stained glass A Novel by George Agnew Chamberlain - He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey - She hoped that Edna would go to see her in the city, and wrote her address with the stub of a pencil on a piece of card which she found in her pocket.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin - If you should stub your toes; If, when you run along, You fall and bump your nose; 65
— from The King of Gee-Whiz by Emerson Hough - "Don't stub your toes so," said her mother, admonishingly.
— from Young Lucretia and Other Stories by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - I can do the one hundred things beyond the next thing, but I stub my toe on that, just as you stubbed your toe on mathematics this fall.”
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald - As children we were chums; we abbreviated for each other the middle name we all bore, Mary calling me Stub, and I calling her Stubby.
— from The Preliminaries, and Other Stories by Cornelia A. P. (Cornelia Atwood Pratt) Comer
