stub

Etymology

From Middle English stubbe (“tree stump”), from Old English stybb, stubb (“tree stump”), from Proto-West Germanic *stubb, from Proto-Germanic *stubbaz (compare Middle Dutch stubbe, Old Norse stubbr, Faroese stubbi (“stub”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tew-; compare steep (“sharp slope”). Sense extended in Middle English to similarly shaped objects. Verb sense “strike one’s toe” is recorded 1848; “extinguish a cigarette” 1927.

noun

1. Something blunted, stunted, or cut short, such as stubble or a stump.
2. A piece of certain paper items, designed to be torn off and kept for record or identification purposes.
   check stub
   ticket stub
   payment stub
3. (programming) A placeholder procedure that has the signature of the planned procedure but does not yet implement the intended behavior.
   Even though the stub is a dummy, it allows us to determine whether the procedure is called at the right time by the program or calling procedure. 2000, Nell B. Dale, Chip Weems, John W. McCormick, Programming and Problem Solving with ADA 95, 2nd edition, Jones & Bartlett Learning, page 352
4. (computing, middleware) A procedure that translates requests from external systems into a format suitable for processing and then submits those requests for processing.
   Coordinate term: skeleton
   The server performs the server RPC runtime library functions to accept the request and call the server stub procedure. […] After this, the server stub calls the actual procedure on the server. 2002, Judith M. Myerson, The Complete Book of Middleware, CRC Press, page 7
5. (typography, in tabular matter) A row heading in a table (with horizontal reference, whereas a column heading has vertical reference).
   Coordinate term: substub
6. (chiefly Wikimedia jargon) A Wikipedia article providing only minimal information and intended for later development.
   A stub is usually long enough to serve as a quick definition, but too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject (see Figure 4-2). 2008, John Broughton, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, O'Reilly Media, page 66
7. The remaining part of the docked tail of a dog
8. An unequal first or last interest calculation period, as a part of a financial swap contract
9. (obsolete) A log or block of wood.
10. (obsolete) A blockhead.
11. A pen with a short, blunt nib.
12. An old and worn horseshoe nail.
13. Stub iron.
14. The smallest remainder of a smoked cigarette; a butt.

verb

1. (transitive) To remove most of a tree, bush, or other rooted plant by cutting it close to the ground.
2. (transitive) To remove a plant by pulling it out by the roots.
3. (transitive) To jam, hit, or bump, especially a toe.
   I stubbed my toe trying to find the light switch in the dark.