Word for Wednesday: Stapler

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Our Word for Wednesday theme for September is stationery. 

Stationery comes from the Latin ‘stationarius’ which means ‘tradesman who sells from a station or shop’. The word was first used to describe ‘the articles sold by a stationer’ in 1727.

So far we have looked at the words pencil, pen, ruler, and sharpener, and today's stationery-themed word is stapler. 

A stapler is a machine that inserts staples into sheets of paper in order to fasten them together.

The word dates to 1949 and comes from ‘staple’ which as a verb dates to the late fourteenth century and as a noun dates to the late thirteenth century (though in both cases ‘staple’ wasn’t used in reference to fastening paper with wire until the 1890s).

The noun 'staple' meaning ‘bent piece of metal’ comes from the Old English ‘stapol’ meaning ‘post’ or ‘pillar’. ‘Stapol’ comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘stapulaz’.
 


30 Sep 2020
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