Meaning

noun a short piece remaining on a trunk or stem where a branch is lost

noun a small piece

noun a torn part of a ticket returned to the holder as a receipt

originFrom Middle English stubbe (“tree stump”), from Old English stybb, stubb (“tree stump”), from Proto-West Germanic *stubb, from Proto-Germanic *stubbaz (compare Middle Dutch stubbe, Old Norse stubbr, Faroese stubbi (“stub”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tew-; compare steep (“sharp slope”). Doublet of stob. Sense extended in Middle English to similarly shaped objects. Verb sense “strike one’s toe”…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0