A traditional measure of composed text, equal to the capacity of a composing stick before the type must be transferred to a galley. A stick typically holds about two to two-and-a-half inches of set lines. In older newspaper rooms, it became a rough unit of measure for a short news item or a specific chunk of copy assigned to a typesetter.
Heard on the job
I need you to set a stickful of filler text to plug the gap at the bottom of column three.