The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
STUB
Definition of STUB
noun
Something blunted, stunted, or cut short, such as stubble or a stump.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From 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” is recorded 1848; “extinguish a cigarette” 1927.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
6 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
14.4%
of traced words share this origin (11,201)
How it is built
Same root, STUB · 7 relatives in the game
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
STUB in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 14 boards so far. 18 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 28, 17 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 148, 15 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 9 days.
First found by a player on Day 28, 17 June 2026.
Built from these letters
STUB starts with S and ends with B. Sorted, its letters read BSTU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
3 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start STUB
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 28
Could you have found STUB?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 28 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER