Etymology

stunt

S1T1U1N1T1

Today it means: A daring or dangerous feat, often involving the display of gymnastic skills. Full definition →

Middle English stont ← Old English stunt ← Proto-Germanic *stuntaz
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

stunt · noun, verb1

Unknown. Compare Middle Low German stunt (“a shoulder grip with which you throw someone on their back”), Middle English stunt (“foolish; stupid”).

stunt · verb, noun2

  1. Proto-Germanic · derived from*stuntaz“short, compact, stupid, dull”
  2. Old English · derived fromstunt“stupid, foolish, simple”
  3. Middle English · derived fromstont
  4. English todaystunt

From dialectal stunt (“stubborn, dwarfed”), from Middle English stont, stunt (“short, brief”), from Old English stunt (“stupid, foolish, simple”), from Proto-Germanic *stuntaz (“short, compact, stupid, dull”). Cognate with Middle High German stunz (“short”), Old Norse stuttr (“short in stature, dwarfed”). Related to Old English styntan (“to make dull, stupefy, become dull, repress”). More at stint.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.