Careful Words

stick (n.)

stick (v.)

stick (adj.)

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,

Was beat with fist instead of a stick.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 11.

  And the final event to himself [Mr. Burke] has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809): Letter to the Addressers.

And when you stick on conversation's burrs,

Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): A Rhymed Lesson. Urania.