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PlainSpell

stye

/ˈstaɪ̯/noun

stye is a noun meaning “A bacterial infection in the eyelash or eyelid” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-T-Y-E and has one syllable (stye), and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of stye is styes.

What does stye mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A bacterial infection in the eyelash or eyelid.

    have a stye

  2. 2

    Alternative form of sty (“shelter for pigs”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce stye?

  • /ˈstaɪ̯/
  • [ˈstaɪ̯]

Stye has one syllable, split stye in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-stye.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of stye

  • styes plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is stye?

Stye appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 114,361st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Stye in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense bacterial infection of the eyelash or eyelid:

LanguageWords
Frenchorgelet, compère loriot
GermanHordeolum, Gerstenkorn
Portuguesehordéolo, terçol, treçolho
Spanishorzuelo, urzuelo, ansuelo, xoy, tutupiche

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does stye come 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.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).