sty

• IPA^(key): /staɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪ
• Homophone: stye

From Middle English sty, from Old English stī, stiġ (“sty, pen, a wooden enclosure; hall”, chiefly in compounds).

Cognate with German Stiege (“wooden crate”), dialectal German Steige (“hen-coop”), Danish sti (“sty, enclosure for swine, sheep, hens, etc.”), Swedish stia (“sty for pigs, geese, etc.”), Norwegian sti (“flock of sheep”), Icelandic stía (“a kennel”).

sty (plural sties)

1. A pen or enclosure for swine.
2. (figurative) A messy, dirty or debauched place.
   • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:

     To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.

• stye

• (enclosure for swine): pigpen, pigsty
• (messy or dirty place): hovel, pigsty

sty (third-person singular simple present sties, present participle stying, simple past and past participle stied)

1. (transitive) To place in, or as if in, a sty.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     and here you sty me
     In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
     The rest o' the island

2. (transitive) To live in a sty, or any messy or dirty place.

• stye

From Middle English stien, stiȝen, stighen, from Old English stīgan (“to go; ascend, mount”), from Proto-West Germanic *stīgan, from Proto-Germanic *stīganą, from Proto-Indo-European *steygʰ-.

Cognate with Dutch stijgen, German steigen, Danish stige, Norwegian Bokmål stige, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish stiga, Old Norse stíga.

sty (third-person singular simple present sties, present participle stying, simple past and past participle stied)

1. (obsolete) To ascend, rise up, climb. [9th–17th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     The beast impatient of his smarting wound, / And of so fierce and forcible despight, / Thought with his wings to stye aboue the ground [...].

   • 1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Muiopotmos, or The Fate of the Butterflie”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC:

     From this lower tract he dared to stie up to the clowdes.

   • 1621, Richard Montague, Diatribae upon the first part of the late History of Tithes:

     Led along, as some Creatures are, by the Noses, and voluntarily hood-winked; or like seeled Doves, sty up, you know not whither, nor how far.

   • 1652, Edward Benlowes, Theophila, or Love's Sacrifice:

     That she might sty to the seat of Beatifick Mirth.

• stee, stie, stigh, stye

• styan
• styey
• stirrup

• stile

sty (plural sties)

1. (British, dialectal) A ladder.

From Middle English styanye, mistaken as "sty on eye" yet composed of Old English stīġend (“sty”, literally “riser”), agent noun from stīgan (“to rise”) + Middle English yë (“eye”).

• stye

sty (plural sties)

2. (pathology) An inflammation of the eyelid.

• YTS

Inherited from Old English stiġ, stī, from Proto-West Germanic *stij, from Proto-Germanic *stiją, related to *stīganą (“to climb, ascend”).

• stye, styȝe

• IPA^(key): /stiː/

sty (plural styes)

1. A pigsty (pen or set of pens for pigs)
2. (rare) Any other crude dwelling or abode.

• English: sty

• “stī, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-08.

Inherited from Old English stīġ, from Proto-West Germanic *stīgu, from Proto-Germanic *stīgō, related to Etymology 1 above.

• sti, stie, stiȝe, stiȝhe, stiyhe, stye

• IPA^(key): /stiː/

sty (plural styes or stiȝen)

1. A path, track or street.
2. (figurative) One's chosen pathway or choices in life.
3. (figurative, rare) A short narrative.

• “stī(e, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-08.