staple

1. 1.

   secure or fasten with a staple or staples

   “staple the papers together”

   Antonymsunstaple

   Broaderfasten

1. 1.

   necessary or important, especially regarding food or commodities

   “wheat is a staple crop”

   Similaressential

Other forms of staple

plural

staples·

past tense

stapled·

present participle

stapling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about staple

What does staple mean?

staple means "(usually in the plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in staple?

staple has 2 syllables: sta-ple. The stress falls on "sta". In IPA it is /ˈsteɪpəl/.

What is another word for staple?

Close synonyms include basic, staple fiber, staple fibre, raw material. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of staple?

The recorded antonyms are unstaple.

Is staple a common word?

staple is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.