STALE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Stale

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adjective

Stale adj.

Vapid or tasteless from age; having lost its life, spirit, and flavor, from being long kept; as, stale beer.

Not new; not freshly made; as, stale bread.

Having lost the life or graces of youth; worn out; decayed. "A stale virgin."

Worn out by use or familiarity; having lost its novelty and power of pleasing; trite; common. "Wit itself, if stale is less pleasing." "How weary, stale flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

Stale affidavit (Law), an affidavit held above a year.

Stale demand (Law), a claim or demand which has not been pressed or demanded for a long time.

noun

Stale n. (Written also steal, stele, etc) The stock or handle of anything; as, the stale of a rake. "But seeing the arrow's stale without, and that the head did go No further than it might be seen."

Stale n.

That which is stale or worn out by long keeping, or by use. (Obs.)

A prostitute. (Obs.)

Urine, esp. that of beasts. "Stale of horses."

Stale n.

Something set, or offered to view, as an allurement to draw others to any place or purpose; a decoy; a stool pigeon. (Obs.) "Still, as he went, he crafty stales did lay."

A stalking-horse. (Obs.)

(Chess) A stalemate. (Obs.)

A laughingstock; a dupe. (Obs.)

verb

Stale v. t. (past & past part. staled; pres. part. staling) To make vapid or tasteless; to destroy the life, beauty, or use of; to wear out. "Age can not wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety."

Stale v. i. To make water; to discharge urine; said especially of horses and cattle.

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Etymology of 'Stale'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books

... can't say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ...

— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... blended their waves at this point, for portions of gray uniform were mingled with the "garments rolled in blood" torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers. I picked up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,—but there was something repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the stale battle-field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy left uncleared, and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and muddy heeltaps. A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier's belt, served well enough for mementos ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... middle classes, and even in the manor-houses and parsonages for which he made up the medicine in his master's surgery. But his treatment of the subject was too palpably imitative of one poetic model, already stale from repetition. Not only did he choose Pope's couplet, with all its familiar antitheses and other mannerisms, but frankly avowed it by parodying whole passages from the Essay on Man and The Dunciad, the original lines being ...

— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... by the length of night required; or perhaps it took three nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? ...

— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

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