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Tack vs Stack - What's the difference?

tack | stack |

As nouns the difference between tack and stack

is that tack is a small nail with a flat head while stack is A pile.

As verbs the difference between tack and stack

is that tack is to nail with a tack (small nail with a flat head) while stack is to arrange in a stack, or to add to an existing stack.

tack

English

Etymology 1

From , probably from a (etyl) source.

Noun

(en noun)
  • A small nail with a flat head.
  • * 2012 , July 15. Richard Williams in Guardian Unlimited, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track
  • A tough test for even the strongest climber, it was new to the Tour de France this year, but its debut will be remembered for the wrong reasons after one of those spectators scattered carpet tacks on the road and induced around 30 punctures among the group of riders including Bradley Wiggins, the Tour's overall leader, and his chief rivals.
  • A thumbtack.
  • (sewing) A loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth.
  • (nautical) The lower corner on the leading edge of a sail relative to the direction of the wind.
  • (nautical) A course or heading that enables a sailing vessel to head upwind. See also reach, gybe.
  • A direction or course of action, especially a new one.
  • * 1994 , Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom , Abacus 2010, p. 637:
  • I thought that my refusing Barnard would alienate Botha, and decided that such a tack was too risky.
  • (nautical) The maneuver by which a sailing vessel turns its bow through the wind so that the wind changes from one side to the other.
  • (nautical) The distance a sailing vessel runs between these maneuvers when working to windward; a board.
  • (nautical) A rope used to hold in place the foremost lower corners of the courses when the vessel is close-hauled; also, a rope employed to pull the lower corner of a studding sail to the boom.
  • Any of the various equipment and accessories worn by horses in the course of their use as domesticated animals. Saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, harnesses, martingales, and breastplates are all forms of horse tack .
  • (manufacturing, construction, chemistry) The stickiness of a compound, related to its cohesive and adhesive properties.
  • The laminate adhesive has very aggressive tack and is hard to move once in place.
  • Hardtack.
  • * 1913 , D. H. Lawrence, "Sons and Lovers":
  • "But if a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack , and a donkey would die of it!"
  • That which is attached; a supplement; an appendix.
  • * Bishop Burnet
  • Some tacks had been made to money bills in King Charles's time.
    (Macaulay)
  • (legal, Scotland) A contract by which the use of a thing is set, or let, for hire; a lease.
  • (Burrill)
  • (obsolete) Confidence; reliance.
  • (Halliwell)
    Synonyms
    * (nautical maneuver) coming about
    Hyponyms
    * (nail-like object for affixing thin things) thumbtack
    Derived terms
    * Blu-Tack * hardtack * thumbtack

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To nail with a tack (small nail with a flat head).
  • To sew/stich with a tack (loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth).
  • (nautical) To maneuver a sailing vessel so that its bow turns through the wind, i.e. the wind changes from one side of the vessel to the other.
  • To add something as an extra item.
  • to tack (something) onto (something)
  • Often paired with "up", to place the tack on a horse.
  • Synonyms
    * to change tack
    Antonyms
    * to wear

    See also

    * * Blu-Tack

    Etymology 2

    From an old or dialectal form of (etyl) tache. See techy.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A stain; a tache.
  • (obsolete) A peculiar flavour or taint.
  • (Drayton)
    ----

    stack

    English

    (wikipedia stack)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (lb) A pile.
  • #A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
  • #*(William Cowper) (1731-1800)
  • #*:But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack .
  • #A pile of similar objects, each directly on top of the last.
  • #:
  • #(lb) A pile of poles or wood, indefinite in quantity.
  • #*(Francis Bacon) (1561-1626)
  • #*:Against every pillar was a stack of billets above a man's height.
  • #A pile of wood containing 108 cubic feet. (~3 m³)
  • A smokestack.
  • *
  • *:With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon , river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks .
  • (lb) In digital computing.
  • #A linear data structure in which the last data item stored is the first retrieved; a LIFO queue.
  • #A portion of computer memory occupied by a stack' data structure, particularly (' the stack ) that portion of main memory manipulated during machine language procedure call related instructions.
  • #*1992 , Michael A. Miller, The 68000 Microprocessor Family: Architecture, Programming, and Applications , p.47:
  • #*:When the microprocessor decodes the JSR opcode, it stores the operand into the TEMP register and pushes the current contents of the PC ($00 0128) onto the stack .
  • (lb) A coastal landform, consisting of a large vertical column of rock in the sea.
  • (senseid)(lb) Compactly spaced bookshelves used to house large collections of books.
  • (lb) A large amount of an object.
  • :
  • (lb) A pile of rifles or muskets in a cone shape.
  • (lb) The amount of money a player has on the table.
  • (lb) In architecture.
  • #A number of flues embodied in one structure, rising above the roof.
  • #A vertical drainpipe.
  • A fall or crash, a prang.
  • (lb) A blend of various dietary supplements or anabolic steroids with supposed synergistic benefits.
  • At Caltech, a lock, obstacle, or puzzle designed to prevent underclassmen from entering a senior's room during ditch day.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To arrange in a stack, or to add to an existing stack.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2013, date=January 22, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC
  • , title= Aston Villa 2-1 Bradford (3-4) , passage=James Hanson, the striker who used to stack shelves in a supermarket, flashed a superb header past Shay Given from Gary Jones's corner 10 minutes after the break.}}
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Catherine Clabby
  • , magazine=(American Scientist), title= Focus on Everything , passage=Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.
  • (card games) To arrange the cards in a deck in a particular manner.
  • (poker) To take all the money another player currently has on the table.
  • To deliberately distort the composition of (an assembly, committee, etc.).
  • (transitive, US, Australia, slang) To crash; to fall.
  • * 1975 , Laurie Clancy, A Collapsible Man , Outback Press, page 43,
  • Miserable phone calls from Windsor police station or from Russell Street. ‘Mum, I?ve stacked the car; could you get me a lawyer?’, the middle-class panacea for all diseases.
  • * 1984 , , A Country Quinella: Two Celebration Plays , page 80,
  • MARMALADE Who stacked the car? (pointing to SALOON) Fangio here.
    JOCK (standing) I claim full responsibility for the second bingle.
  • * 2002 , Ernest Keen, Depression: Self-Consciousness, Pretending, and Guilt , page 19,
  • Eventually he sideswiped a bus and forced other cars to collide, and as he finally stacked the car up on a bridge abutment, he passed out, perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from his head hitting the windshield.
  • * 2007 , Martin Chipperfield, slut talk'', ''Night Falling , 34th Parallel Publishing, US, Trade Paperback, page 100,
  • oh shit danny, i stacked' the car / ran into sally, an old school friend / you ' stacked the car? / so now i need this sally?s address / for the insurance, danny says

    Anagrams

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