stales

Noun (1)

stale (plural stales)

1. (colloquial) Something stale; a loaf of bread or the like that is no longer fresh.
   • I went to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not quite.1874, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, II iii 39

Noun (2)

stale (plural stales)

1. A long, thin handle (of rakes, axes, etc.)
   • In Case your Cask is a Butt,...have ready boiling...Water, which put in, and, with a long Stale and a little Birch fastened to its End, scrub the Bottom.1742, W. Ellis, London & Country Brewer, 4th edition, I 61
2. (dialectal) One of the posts or uprights of a ladder.
   • Stales, the staves, or risings of a ladder, or the staves of a rack in a stable.1887, W. D. Parish et al., Kentish Dial.
3. One of the rungs on a ladder.
   • To begin then: not long before this paragraph was written, P fell into doze, and dreamt, he saw Jacob's ladder with one foot standing on the earth, the other reaching up into heaven. Dukes, Marquisses, and other Peers, fancy represented to him, as standing on the upper stales; on the middle ones...1792, Thomas Paine, A Rod in Brine, or a tickler for T. Paine, page 16
4. (obsolete) The stem of a plant.
5. The shaft of an arrow, spear, etc.
   • The Surgians cut of the stale of that shaft in suche wise, that they moued not the heade that was wythin the fleshe.1553, Q. Curtius Rufus, translated by J. Brende, Hist., section IX

See all 39 meanings of stale