[f. STOOK sb.; cf. MLG. stûken, WFlem. stuiken, G. stauchen.] trans. To set up (sheaves) in stooks. Also with up.
c. 1575. Sir J. Balfour, Practicks (1754), 220. The fruitis of the samin benefice beand separate fra the ground, be scheiring, stouking or stakking thairof.
1592. Sc. Acts Jas. VI. (1814), III. 583/2. Quhen as the cornis ar standand vpon the grounde stoukit.
1611. Cotgr., Endizeler les gerbes, to stonke [read stouke], or shocke vp sheaues of corne; to set, or make them vp in (tenne-sheaued) halfe-thraues.
1652. Lamont, Diary (Maitl. Club), 43. About Dundie in Angus ther was beare stowked.
1765. Museum Rust., IV. 457. If the flax be so short and branchy as to appear most valuable for seed, it ought, after pulling, to be stooked.
1794. A. Pringle, Agric. Westmorland, 31. Four men may cut, tie, and stook, a customary acre in a day.
1823. A. Small, Rom. Antiq. Fife, 135. Corn,… taken out of a place where it has not much air to dry it, and stooked up thick on the ground.
1851. H. Stephens, Book of Farm (ed. 2), II. 336/1. The corn is stooked upon the ridge where it grew.
1887. Hall Caine, Deemster, viii. They were stooking the barley in the glebe.
b. absol.
1641. Best, Farm. Books (Surtees), 54. Oftentimes a painfull fellowe will not refuse to stooke after 7 or 8 Sythes, if the binders will but … throwe him in the sheaves.
1799. J. Robertson, Agric. Perth, 159. Seven reapers generally have a man to bind and stook after them.
1868. G. Macdonald, R. Falconer, I. 262. Lasses to cut, and lasses to gether, and lasses to bin’, and lasses to stook.
Hence Stooked ppl. a., Stooking vbl. sb.
1575. Stouking [see the vb.].
1787. Burns, Answ. Gudwife Wauchope-House, i. Still shearing, and clearing The tither stooked raw.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, III. 1066. In stooking, bean-sheaves are set up in pairs against one another.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 21 June, 6/1. The cutting, the ‘stooking,’ and the gathering into the stackyard of their corn.
1884. St. James’s Gaz., 22 Aug., 14/2. Fields of shocked or stooked corn.
1900. Crockett, Fitting of Peats, iv. Love Idylls (1901), 27. After the manner of stooked sheaves in a harvest field.
