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Stickle vs Sickle - What's the difference?

stickle | sickle |

As verbs the difference between stickle and sickle

is that stickle is to act as referee or arbiter; to mediate while sickle is to cut with a sickle.

As nouns the difference between stickle and sickle

is that stickle is a shallow rapid in a river while sickle is an implement, having a semicircular blade and short handle, used for cutting long grass and cereal crops.

As an adjective sickle is

shaped like the blade of a sickle; crescent-shaped.

stickle

English

Verb

(en-verb)
  • (obsolete) To act as referee or arbiter; to mediate.
  • 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.’
  • To raise objections; to argue stubbornly, especially over minor or trivial matters.
  • (obsolete) To separate, as combatants; hence, to quiet, to appease, as disputants.
  • * Drayton
  • Which [question] violently they pursue, / Nor stickled would they be.
  • (obsolete) To intervene in; to stop, or put an end to, by intervening.
  • * Sir Philip Sidney
  • They ran to him, and, pulling him back by force, stickled that unnatural fray.
  • (obsolete) To separate combatants by intervening.
  • * Dryden
  • 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.
  • (obsolete) To contend, contest, or altercate, especially in a pertinacious manner on insufficient grounds.
  • * Hudibras
  • Fortune, as she's wont, turned fickle, / And for the foe began to stickle .
  • * Dryden
  • for paltry punk they roar and stickle
  • * Hazlitt
  • the obstinacy with which he stickles for the wrong

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (UK, dialect) A shallow rapid in a river.
  • (UK, dialect) The current below a waterfall.
  • * W. Browne
  • Patient anglers, standing all the day / Near to some shallow stickle or deep bay.

    Anagrams

    * *

    sickle

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (agriculture) an implement, having a semicircular blade and short handle, used for cutting long grass and cereal crops
  • Synonyms

    * reap hook * reaping hook

    See also

    * scythe

    Verb

    (sickl)
  • (agriculture) To cut with a sickle
  • To deform (as with a red blood cell) into an abnormal crescent shape.
  • To assume an abnormal crescent shape. Used of red blood cells.
  • Derived terms

    * sickler

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Shaped like the blade of a sickle; crescent-shaped.
  • a sickle moon