stick to one's guns

verb

"stick-to-one-s-guns" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“stick to one's guns” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
19
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To persist in faithfully attending to cannons while under fire.

Corpus desk

Index EN-stick-to-one-s-guns · stick to one's guns · English

stick to one's guns · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 19 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "S" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for stick to one's guns
PropertyValue
Headwordstick to one's guns
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters19
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “stick to one's guns” in English

stick to one's gunssits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

stick to one's guns is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for stick to one's guns, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is stick to one's guns, spelled S-T-I-C-K- -T-O- -O-N-E-'-S- -G-U-N-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    To persist in faithfully attending to cannons while under fire.
  2. 2
    To maintain one’s position or viewpoint when faced with opposition.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how stick to one's guns appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Capitan Beaulieu-de-Long and his first lieutenant were both killed, several guns dismounted, and many of the [French frigate] crew killed and wounded. . . . Nevertheless the French stuck bravely to their guns, while the flame of the cannonade illuminated the scene beneath the canopy of smoke.
  2. Ronald had stuck to his guns and refused me to the last.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "stick to one's guns"?
"stick to one's guns" is spelled S-T-I-C-K- -T-O- -O-N-E-'-S- -G-U-N-S.
What does "stick to one's guns" mean?
As a verb, "stick to one's guns" means: To persist in faithfully attending to cannons while under fire.
What language does "stick to one's guns" come from?
"stick to one's guns" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list