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GERMAN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

Stau.

congestion, stagnancy of water or anything dammed or otherwise backed-up

4 characters1 syllables approx.Deutsch language

Meaning & usage

noun/ʃtaʊ̯/
  1. congestion, stagnancy of water or anything dammed or otherwise backed-up

    masculine · strong
  2. ellipsis of Verkehrsstau (“traffic jam”)

    abbreviation · alt-of · ellipsis · especially · masculine · strong
  3. weir

    masculine · strong
Where this word comes from

First attested in the 18th century, from Low German Stau, from Middle Low German stouw, stouwe (“weir”), probably a back-formation from stouwen (“to stop, dam”), from Old Saxon *stōwa, from Proto-West Germanic *stōu, ultimately derived from Proto-Germanic *stōō (“place”). Cognate with Dutch stuw. Alternatively the Dutch and Low German forms could be inherited from the Germanic noun (like English stow), but the sense makes a new deverbal derivation more likely.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.