Word.ws English Dictionary

stick-and-carrot

stick-and-carrot is the alternative form of carrot and stick.

Meaning of carrot and stick

Noun

carrot and stick (plural carrots and sticks)

  1. (idiomatic) The simultaneous rewarding of good behavior and punishing of bad behavior.
    • It was this carrot and stick discipline to which Mr. John Mill was subjected, and which he accepted dutifully as flowing from that perfect wisdom of which up to this time his father had been the representative.1876, Lord Blachford, “The Reality of Duty, as Illustrated by the Autobiography of Mr. John Stuart Mill”, in The Contemporary Review, page 523

Forms of stick-and-carrot

pluralsticks-and-carrots

Questions about stick-and-carrot

What is stick-and-carrot the alternative form of?
Stick-and-carrot is the alternative form of carrot and stick.

Words near stick-and-carrot in the dictionary

  1. stick weld
  2. stick welded
  3. stick welding
  4. stick welds
  5. stick with
  6. stick-and-carrot
  7. stick-and-poke
  8. stick-and-pokes
  9. stick-at-itiveness
  10. stick-fighter
  11. stick-fighters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stick-and-carrot (page history and authors); carrot and stick (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “stick-and-carrot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stick-and-carrot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.