After Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants won the World Series Most Valuable Player award, Chevrolet called on a local regional manager to present Bumgarner with the keys to the truck that went with the award. On national TV. The man fumbled, lost his train of thought, and ended up blurting out that the pitcher was sure to like the truck because it has “class-winning and leading, you know, technology and stuff.”
Social media erupted, as only social media can do, in a festive mock-a-thon. The Twitter hashtags #technologyandstuff and #ChevyGuy exploded; the best minds of their generation emerged with creations like this:
Well #hardyharhar. Leaving aside that this dude was nervous (as well as being upset that his home team had just lost the Series), the fact is that he effectively expressed his meaning. There is certainly nothing wrong or sketchy about the word stuff. It has been used since the 14th century to mean “equipment, stores, stock,” originally in a military context. Shakespeare transformed it, as only Shakespeare can do. Marc Antony said, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,” and Prospero, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
John Donne reflected, “As soone as my soule enters into Heaven, I shall be able to say to the Angels, I am of the same stuffe as you, spirit, and spirit.” Sir Henry Wotton wrote in 1624, “I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff.”
The “technology and stuff”-type stuff shows up in about 1700. Oliver Goldsmith availed himself of it when he commented, “Then they talk’d of their Raphaels, Corregios and stuff.”
A couple of centuries later, J.D. Salinger had Holden Caulfield observe, “I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible.” That suggests the word’s euphemistic use. Donald Rumseld made it into The Yale Book of Quotations with the line, “Stuff happens.”
Stuff begat stuffing—that which is stuffed. And it lends itself to near-endless idiomatic variation, as in “Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple addition.” (Eliot, Adam Bede.) There’s the Right Stuff, doing your stuff, knowing your stuff, thinking you’re hot stuff, kid stuff, the small stuff (not to be sweated), and Jean Knight’s classic soul song “Mr. Big Stuff” (“who do you think you are?”).
It’s an endlessly useful word, helpful in referring nonspecifically to any collection or assortment, either material or conceptual. My understanding is that native speakers of other language, such as Korean, have problems with the noncount nature of it, and find it difficult to stop saying “stuffs.”
General Motors has not recently distinguished itself with a deft hand at public relations. But in this case it came through swimmingly. On Thursday, the company embraced the hashtag and tweeted this on the Chevy Trucks feed:
Good stuff.