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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

stye.

A bacterial infection in the eyelash or eyelid.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈstaɪ̯/[ˈstaɪ̯]
  1. A bacterial infection in the eyelash or eyelid.

    have a stye
    suffer from a stye
Where this word comes from

First recorded in the 17th century; probably a back-formation from Middle English styanye (first recorded in the 15th century), which in turn comes from Old English stīgend (“a small tumour on the edge of the eyelid, stye”), from the verb stīgan (“to climb, ascend, rise”) + Middle English eie (“eye”). Equivalent to sty + eye.

noun/ˈstaɪ̯/[ˈstaɪ̯]
  1. Alternative form of sty (“shelter for pigs”).

    alt-of · alternative
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.