The English Oracle

What are the words for the different parts of a ticket?

--------------------------------------------------
Rise to the top 3% as a developer or hire one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Puzzle Game Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 What Are The Words For The Different Parts Of A Ticket?
00:27 Accepted Answer Score 49
01:03 Answer 2 Score 6
02:13 Answer 3 Score 3
02:39 Answer 4 Score 32
02:45 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#singlewordrequests #nouns

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 49


As to the first, the part the customer retains is called a stub (the returned portion of a ticket), and the other part is sometimes known as the counterfoil (though the term can be applied to other things similar to tickets, such as a money order). The second could be tearing or detaching (there isn't a specific term just for tickets, that I know of), and the third is a perforation.

Edit: since the term counterfoil has been found, I decided to go ahead and put it in my answer to make it complete — but the credit goes to user11761.




ANSWER 2

Score 32


Counterfoil is the part of the ticket that is retained by the issuing authority.




ANSWER 3

Score 6


Once detached from one another, the detached parts are stubs. Generally, the word is used in the context of the half the customer retains: "When you go to the restroom, remember to bring your ticket stub with you, or you may not be allowed back in." If there's a special word for the half the box office retains, I've never heard it.

Edit, because quotations from the OED make everything better: The Oxford English Dictionary finds ticket stub in use by Ellery Queen in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929): "You'll be looking for ticket-stubs. Anything resembling half a ticket." The earliest definition given for stub, from the year 967, is as a synonym for "stump" (of a tree); many or most of the definitions that have evolved since then retain the sense of a small thing that has been severed from a larger thing—like a ticket stub.

Edit 2: Here's a reference from 1887, in a joke that does not seem to have aged very well since then:

"BATH-HOUSE ROBBER: No use lookin' fer anythin' here, Bill. Ticket stub ter one of Joe Cook's lectures, an' a poker chip. Busted drummer from Boston!"

I guess you had to be there.




ANSWER 4

Score 3


The customer's part is usually called a stub. (For example, restaurants near cinemas will sometimes advertise a discount "with a ticket stub".) The act of separating the two parts is sometimes called "tearing"; alternatively, the overall act of a gatekeeper being handed your ticket, tearing it, and giving you your part back is sometimes "taking a ticket", same as if you didn't get a part back.

I don't know of a specific word for the part the venue keeps.