stub

noun

1. Something blunted, stunted, or cut short, such as stubble or a stump.

   “And prickly stubs instead of trees are found.”

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. 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.”

4. A procedure that translates requests from external systems into a format suitable for processing and then submits those requests for processing.

   “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.”

5. A row heading in a table (with horizontal reference, whereas a column heading has vertical reference).
6. An 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).”

7. A length of transmission line or waveguide that is connected at one end only.
8. The remaining part of the docked tail of a dog
9. An unequal first or last interest calculation period, as a part of a financial swap contract
10. (obsolete)A log or block of wood.
11. (obsolete)A blockhead.

    “I doubt not but ye ſhall have more adoe to drive out dulleſt and lazieſt youth, our ſtocks and ſtubbs from the infinite deſire of such a happy nurture, then we have now to hale and drag our choiſeſt and hopefulleſt wits to that aſinine feaſt of ſowthiſtles and brambles[.]”

12. A pen with a short, blunt nib.
13. An old and worn horseshoe nail.
14. Stub iron.
15. 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.”