Stub

"Biff stared absently at the stubs that remained on his right hand, and shuddered as he recalled his encounter with the Ronco Fingerator, all those years ago."

verb, to render as a stub, to reduce to a mere stump

"Biff took one last drag on the Newport menthol in his left hand, before stubbing it out in the ashtray."

verb, to smack your big toe against the same damned doorjamb three times just this week!

A stub, in the context of computer programming, especially in terms of object-oriented design and distributed computing, is an object class, usually generated by the compiler, which marshalls remote method calls on distributed objects over a network connection. Once the method call reaches the server, the server calls the dispatch method of a skeleton, which in turn calls the appropriate method on the object and pushes the result back down the wire.

Stub (?), n. [OE. stubbe, AS. stub, styb; akin to D. stobbe, LG. stubbe, Dan. stub, Sw. stubbe, Icel. stubbr, stubbi; cf. Gr. .]

1.

The stump of a tree; that part of a tree or plant which remains fixed in the earth when the stem is cut down; -- applied especially to the stump of a small tree, or shrub.

Stubs sharp and hideous to behold. Chaucer.

And prickly stubs instead of trees are found. Dryden.

2.

A log; a block; a blockhead.

Milton.

3.

The short blunt part of anything after larger part has been broken off or used up; hence, anything short and thick; as, the stub of a pencil, candle, or cigar.

4.

A part of a leaf in a check book, after a check is torn out, on which the number, amount, and destination of the check are usually recorded.

5.

A pen with a short, blunt nib.

6.

A stub nail; an old horseshoe nail; also, stub iron.

Stub end Mach., the enlarged end of a connecting rod, to which the strap is fastened. -- Stub iron, iron made from stub nails, or old horseshoe nails, -- used in making gun barrels. -- Stub mortise Carp., a mortise passing only partly through the timber in which it is formed. -- Stub nail, an old horseshoe nail; a nail broken off; also, a short, thick nail. -- Stub short, ∨ Stub shot Lumber Manuf., the part of the end of a sawn log or plank which is beyond the place where the saw kerf ends, and which retains the plank in connection with the log, until it is split off. -- Stub twist, material for a gun barrel, made of a spirally welded ribbon of steel and stub iron combined.

© Webster 1913.

Stub, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stubbed (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Stubbing.]

1.

To grub up by the roots; to extirpate; as, to stub up edible roots.

What stubbing, plowing, digging, and harrowing is to a piece of land. Berkley.

2.

To remove stubs from; as, to stub land.

3.

To strike as the toes, against a stub, stone, or other fixed object.

© Webster 1913.