A Dictionary of Cont..

StQd 478
This unit of weight is not used in America,
though the word is known to most educated
Americans and was, apparently, formerly used,
at least in New England (He wus not a ghosf,
my visitor, but solid flesh and bone;/ He wore
0: Palo Alto hut, his weight was twenty stone-
Oliver Wendell Holmes).
In discussing the term as a unit, the plural is
stones (The many stones formerly in use in
England were a cause of great confusion), but
the plural as the term of measurement of a
man’s weight is stone (fourteen stone, stripped).
stood. See stand.
stoop, as an architectural term, is a word to be
found only in New World English. Derived
from the Dutch stoep, it means a raised entrance
platform with steps leading up to it, or a small
verandah or porch to a house (They sat out on
the stoop in the cool of the evening, fanning
themselves with palm-lenf funs and chatting
with friends who chanced to stroll by).
stooped. As an adjective describing a posture in
which the head and shoulders are bent, or the
body generally is bent, forward and downward
from an erect position, Americans use the past
participle stooped where the English use the
present participle stooping (She wus startled to
fznd him so stooped and gray).
stop. This verb may be followed by the -ing form
of a verb, as in he stopped reading. An infinitive
following stop does not show what was stopped
but only the purpose of the stopping, as in he
stopped to read.
Stop may be used to mean “stay for a short
time,” as in we stopped there for three days. It
has been used in this way in literary English
for several centuries.
stop; cease; pause; quit. Stop is the everyday working
word, pertaining to actions or to objects in
motion (The car ahead stopped suddenly. Oh,
do stop talking that wayf). Cerise is more literary
and formal and suggests the coming to an
end of something that has been going on for a
while (Cease this way of life and turn to better
things. Cease and desist, in the name of the
law). Stop also, perhaps merely because of the
abruptness of its sound, suggests a more abrupt
cessation. If a violinist, for example, at a formal
concert concluded a long and difficult piece, it
might be said that he ceased playing. If there
were some sudden interruption that compelled
him to discontinue, it would most likely be said
that he stopped playing.
Pause implies that the action or motion will
continue after an interval. The pause that refreshes
implies that the pauser, refreshed, will
resume his activities with renewed vigor.
Quit in the sense of stop or discontinue is now
standard usage in America though not used in
England. It formerly meant to set free, to release
(Let’s call it quits, that is, let us release
each other from our obligations and agreement),
and in its sense of stop there is often a suggestion
of release. A man quits a job he doesn’t
like; he would probably leave a position he
lied. See also end.
store has different implications and uses in Amurica
and England. In the United States a store
is a place where goods are kept for sale, what
in England is called a shop. As J. B. Greenough
and G. L. Kittredge explain in Words and their
Ways (1901, p. 134), “This is not mere provincial
grandiloquence, as is often supposed,
but results from the fact that, when the use
grew up, the places in question were really
storehouses, as every ‘shop’ in a new country
must necessarily be.” The English reserve the
word store largely for a storehouse or warehouse,
though there are cooperative stores in
England and a large shop divided into several
departments, which Americans would call a department
store, is in England called rhe stores
(James Ramsey, sitting on the floor cutting out
pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the
Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture
of a refrigerator . . . with heavenly bliss-
Virginia Woolf).
In America one says drugstore, in England
chemist’s shop, or simply chemist’s American
chain stores are English multiple stores. An
American storekeeper is an English shopkeeper.
When the English use storekeeper, they refer
to an officer or official in charge of naval or
military stores; in America such a term may be
used of a naval petty officer or warrant officer
whose duties involve stores. In America store
is often used colloquially in combination with
other words to suggest that the object referred
to was bought at a store instead of being made
at home. Thus store clothes are clothes that
have been bought, that are not homemade. Store
teeth is a humorous (and hackneyed) term for
false teeth (You must have paid plenty for those
store teeth, Pop). Since it has now been several
generations since any large number of Americans
have been awe-struck at the superiority and
splendor of “boughten” things, this use of store
is now either an affectation of rusticity or a
dreary whimsy. See also shop.
storey; story. Where Americans use only story,
the English may use either story or storey to
describe a complete horizontal section of a
building, having one continuous or approximately
continuous floor; the set of rooms on
the same floor or level of a building; each of
the stages, separated by floors, one above the
other, of which a building consists (a twentystory
skyscraper. He lived on the fifth story).
Story may mean, in England and America, a
narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or
verse, designed to interest or amuse the hearer
or reader; a tale (Tell me the old, old story).
In colloquial usage, cynicism has made the word
synonymous for a lie (That’s a story, and you
know it; Z wasn’t there at all). It is used in this
sense chiefly by children-or was so used; it’s
now a little archaic-as a euphemism for lie.
In American journalism story has the loose
sense of an account of some event or situation,
especially as it appears in the paper (The Philadelphia
Story. It was when we were in New
Orleans, working on the Mardi Gras story. The