Word.ws English Dictionary

stick a pin there

stick a pin there phrase: note carefully; bear in mind.

Phrase

stick a pin there

  1. Note carefully; bear in mind.
    • Better and better; and yet p. 30. he tells us; Long and ſad Experience proved that All the Means be uſed to reform the World, proved ineffectual: So Good that he deſigns, and deſires the Happinevs of all his Creatures, according to the Capacity of Their Natures, Stick a Pin there.1645, William Sherlock, Anti-Sozzo, sive Sherlociſmus Enervatus, London: Nathanael Ponder, page 171
    • For instance, when a common person would say Stop, a military man would say Halt, a sailor Avast, a plough-jogger Whoh or Hush, and a quoter of poetry, "Stick a pin there." But enough of this.1781, The Belknap Papers; in Collections of the Massachussetts Historical Society: Volume II. Fifth Series, Boston, 1877, page 103

Origin of stick a pin there

As with the similar phrase put a pin in, popular modern theories suggesting origin in 20thC military use (re-inserting the safety pin into a hand grenade) or using thumbtacks to attach notices to a corkboard, are chronologically impossible. Physical evidence from 18thC books suggests the phrase may derive from the practice of readers inserting sewing pins into the fold near a book's spine to mark a specific passage or page.

Questions about stick a pin there

What does stick a pin there mean?
Stick a pin there means note carefully; bear in mind.
What part of speech is stick a pin there?
Stick a pin there is a phrase.

Words near stick a pin there in the dictionary

  1. stick
  2. stick 'em up
  3. stick a fork in me, I'm done
  4. stick a fork in something
  5. stick a needle in my eye
  6. stick a pin there
  7. stick a sock in it
  8. stick and carrot
  9. stick around
  10. stick at
  11. stick at nothing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stick a pin there (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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