stickle

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈstɪk(ə)l/
• Rhymes: -ɪkəl

From Middle English *stikel, *stykyl (in compounds), from Old English sticel (“a prickle, sting, goad”), from Proto-Germanic *stiklaz, *stikilaz (“sting, stinger, peak, cup, goblet”).

stickle (plural stickles)

1. A sharp point; prickle; a spine

• stickleback

From Middle English stikel, from Old English sticel, sticol (“high, lofty, steep, reaching great heights, inaccessible”), from Proto-Germanic *stikulaz, *stikkulaz (“high, steep”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- (“to stick; peak”).

stickle (comparative more stickle, superlative most stickle)

1. steep; high; inaccessible
2. (Britain, dialectal) high, as the water of a river; swollen; sweeping; rapid

stickle (plural stickles)

1. (Britain, dialectal) A shallow rapid in a river.
2. (Britain, dialectal) The current below a waterfall.
   • W. Browne (Can we date this quote?)

     Patient anglers, standing all the day / Near to some shallow stickle or deep bay.

From a variant of stightle (“to order, arrange, direct”), from Middle English stightelen, stiȝtlen, stihilen, stihlen, equivalent to stight (“to order, rule, govern”) +‎ -le (frequentative suffix).

stickle (third-person singular simple present stickles, present participle stickling, simple past and past participle stickled)

1. (obsolete) To act as referee or arbiter; to mediate.
2. (now rare) To argue or struggle for.
   • 1897, Henry James, What Maisie Knew:

     ‘She has other people than poor little you to think about, and has gone abroad with them; so you needn’t be in the least afraid she’ll stickle this time for her rights.’

3. To raise objections; to argue stubbornly, especially over minor or trivial matters.
   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History

     Miserable new Berline! Why could not Royalty go in some old Berline similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about his vehicle.

4. (transitive, obsolete) To separate, as combatants; hence, to quiet, to appease, as disputants.
   • Drayton (Can we date this quote?)

     Which [question] violently they pursue, / Nor stickled would they be.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To intervene in; to stop, or put an end to, by intervening.
   • Sir Philip Sidney (Can we date this quote?)

     They ran to him, and, pulling him back by force, stickled that unnatural fray.

6. (intransitive, obsolete) To separate combatants by intervening.
   • Dryden (Can we date this quote?)

     When he [the angel] sees half of the Christians killed, and the rest in a fair way of being routed, he stickles betwixt the remainder of God’s host and the race of fiends.

7. (intransitive, obsolete) To contend, contest, or altercate, especially in a pertinacious manner on insufficient grounds.
   • Hudibras (Can we date this quote?)

     Fortune, as she’s wont, turned fickle, / And for the foe began to stickle.

   • Dryden (Can we date this quote?)

     for paltry punk they roar and stickle

   • Hazlitt (Can we date this quote?)

     the obstinacy with which he stickles for the wrong

• stickler

• stickle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• stickle in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• stickle at OneLook Dictionary Search

• Stickel, Tickles, icklest, lickest, tickles