English
style
Style comes from Middle English stile ‘writing tool’, and goes back to Latin stilus ‘a stake, pale, spike’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEstilus1‘a stake’
- Medieval Latinc. 600–1500stylus1
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500stile2‘writing tool’
- Englishearliest quotation 1611style2
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, Middle English stile
- 2 Wiktionary, English style
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1611, Iohn Speed [i.e., John Speed]: “[…] Donenald O-Neale, rovvſed out of his lurking holes,…”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEstilusWiktionary, Middle English stile‘a stake’
- Medieval Latinc. 600–1500stylusWiktionary, Middle English stile
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500stileWiktionary, English style‘writing tool’
- Englishearliest quotation 1611styleWiktionary, English style. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1611, Iohn Speed [i.e., John Speed]: “[…] Donenald O-Neale, rovvſed out of his lurking holes,…”
The story
The noun is derived from Middle English stile (‘writing tool; piece of written work; characteristic mode of expression; demeanour; person's designation or title; stem of a plant; period of time’) (compare semantic development to по́черк (póčerk, “handwriting, style”)), from Old French estile, or from Medieval Latin stylus, both from Latin stilus (‘pointed instrument; writing tool; composition; characteristic mode of expression; stem of a plant’), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- (‘to be sharp; to pierce, prick, puncture, stab; to goad’).
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with style, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- ‘to be sharp’
- attack ← attaque ← attaquerdeverb. ← attaccare ← staccare
- stock ← stok ← stocc ← *stokk ← *stukkaz
- stick ← sticke ← sticca ← *stikkō ← *stikkô
- tiger ← tygre ← tigre ← tigris ← τίγρις
- stigma ← στίγμα ← στίζω
- etiquette ← estiquette ← estacher ← atachier ← *stekan
- stitch ← stiche ← stiċe ← *stiki ← *stikiz
- detach ← destachier ← atachier ← *stekan ← *stikaną
- instigate ← īnstīgātus ← īnstīgō
- tigress ← tigresse ← tigre ← tigre ← tigre
12 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun A sharp stick used for writing on clay tablets or other surfaces; a stylus; (by extension, obsolete) an instrument used to write with ink; a pen.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “style”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Middle English stile. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin stilus / style