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stile

UK/staɪl/US/staɪl/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — sty sits at #11,501leans written

Other forms: stiles

A stile is the steps that let people cross a fence but not animals. Climb the stile.

It keeps a right of way open without a gate that could be left unfastened. A stile is a real barrier to anybody with a stick or a pushchair, which is why gates are replacing them.

Etan J. Tal · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of stile

  1. 1nounstileThe steps that let people cross a fence but not animals.C1

    “The stile had rotted and the whole path was closed for a year.”

stile is a crossing.

Where it comes from

Old English stigel is related to a root meaning to climb.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *steygʰ-

  2. Middle English

    stile

  3. English, today

    stile

From Middle English stile. From Middle English stile,style,stiȝele, from Old English stiġel (“stile, set of steps for getting over a fence”), from Proto-West Germanic stigilu, from Proto-Germanic stigilō (“entry, entrance, overpass, device for climbing, stile”), equivalent to sty + le. Cognate with Dutch stegel (“stirrup”), Low German Stegel (“stile”), German Stiegel (“stile”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Farm & Countryside

Practise this word

stile in the wild

  • The stile concertato made possible the composition of extremely dramatic music, one of the characteristic innovations of the early Baroque.

    Stile concertato

  • The vertical members of the frame are called stiles while the horizontal members are known as rails.

    Frame and panel

  • A basic frame and panel item consists of a top rail, a bottom rail, two stiles, and a panel.

    Frame and panel

  • Similar hatches can let dogs through fences at stiles.

    Pet door

  • Seconda pratica, Italian for "second practice", is the counterpart to prima pratica (or stile antico) and is sometimes referred to as stile moderno.

    Seconda pratica

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

  • sty
  • stiletto