"Whether it's British, Irish, American, or Singaporean English, little sentence-ending tack-ons like "…and stuff," "…and all that," "…and things," or "…and whatnot" seem to be everywhere these days. Linguists find that these type of sentence extenders are used across all sorts of world Englishes from the "and that" form more common in New Zealand and Britain to the "…and whatever" or "and stuff" increasingly heard in North America."
"they are a way to make the idea being mentioned in a sentence extend to include non-specified but somehow similar items. For instance, if someone says "I really like to eat fruit and oatmeal and stuff like that" in responding to a question about what they eat for breakfast, "and stuff like that" is a shortcut way to extend the set of things they like to have for breakfast beyond just fruit and oatmeal."
General extenders such as 'and stuff', 'and things', 'and that', and 'and whatnot' appear across many varieties of English, including British, Irish, American, New Zealand, and Singaporean English. These tack-on phrases broaden a named category to include non-specified but similar items. Speakers use them to signal a set of items that listeners can infer without listing everything. General extenders streamline conversation and avoid unnecessary detail. They rely on shared background knowledge between speaker and listener. Different forms are more common in different regions, reflecting variation within world Englishes.
Read at Psychology Today
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