stick

\ \ Stick ‘piece of wood’ [OE] and stick ‘fix, adhere’ [OE] come from the same Germanic source: the base *stik-, *stek-, *stak- ‘pierce, prick, be sharp’ (which also produced English attach, stake, stitch, stockade, and stoke). This in turn went back to the Indo-European base *stig-, *steig-, whose other descendants include Greek stígma (source of English stigma) and Latin stīgāre ‘prick, incite’ (source of English instigate [16]) and stinguere ‘prick’ (source of English distinct, extinct, and instinct). From the Germanic base was derived a verb, source of English stick, which originally meant ‘pierce’.

\ \ The notion of ‘piercing’ led on via ‘thrusting something sharp into something’ and ‘becoming fixed in something’ to ‘adhering’. The same base produced the noun *stikkon, etymologically a ‘pointed’ piece of wood, for piercing, which has become English stick. Yet another derivative of the base was Old English sticels ‘spine, prickle’, which forms the first element of the fish-name stickleback [15] – etymologically ‘prickly back’.

\ \ Cf.⇒ ATTACH, DISTINCT, EXTINCT, INSTIGATE, INSTINCT, STAKE, STIGMA, STIMULATE, STITCH, STOCKADE, STOKE, STYLE