On Stuff and Things

I've recently been struck by the implicit differentiation* between the words "stuff" and "things." Stuff, it appears, lacks boundaries. A pile of discreet objects on the floor can be referred to as a continuous quantity of stuff, or else as a specified number of things.

Out doing stuff seems to be even less specific than out doing things, although neither gives the hearer any information about what one's been doing, where one's been doing it, for how long, and with whom.

Stuff seems to demand units of measure (liquid volume or mass seems most appropriate, as in "man, there's like a hundred gallons of stuff on my floor," or "I had to throw like fifty pounds of stuff"), while things demands some number (as in "i have a million things to do," or "there're like twenty things in my pockets"). I posit then that "stuff" is analogous to continuous modulation, and "things" to discreet modulation.

\end{ramble}

Put some pants on,
-Stinja

*Well, not actually implicit differentiation, because that's calculus talk. More like subtle connotation, or semantic rift**.

**Though Semantic Rift sounds like a baller language-based video game. Maybe it can be the expansion pack for Grammar Emblem.