n. Chiefly Southern U.S.
A short straight piece of wood, such as a stake.
[Middle English, stump, variant of stubbe, stub. See stub.]
REGIONAL NOTE The Southern word stob means a short straight stick of wood: "Jim Rozier's skill with a piece of iron and a hardwood stob sets up a vibration in the earth that Sopchoppy worms find extremely disagreeable" (Charles Kuralt). Related to stub and stubby, stob is one of numerous Indo-European cognates, for example, Greek stupos, meaning "stump (of a tree or branch)." In Middle English stob seems to have been a variant spelling of stub, with one of its meanings being "the amputated stump of a human limb." However, the word has chiefly denoted a short piece of wood, such as "a small post or stake or stump of a shrub, [and is] commonly so used in many, if not all, parts of the [American] South" (Charles F. Smith).
