Word.ws English Dictionary

stickleback

stickleback noun: any one of numerous species of small fish of the family Gasterosteidae. The back is armed with two or more sharp spines. They inhabit both salt and brackish water, and construct nests from weeds.

stickleback: any one of numerous species of small fish of the family Gasterosteidae. The back is armed with two...
Image: nl:Gebruiker:GerardM/Ron Offermans, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stickleback (plural sticklebacks)

  1. Any one of numerous species of small fish of the family Gasterosteidae. The back is armed with two or more sharp spines. They inhabit both salt and brackish water, and construct nests from weeds.
    • [I]n my exile and irkeſome diſcontented abandonment, the ſillieſt millers thombe, or contemptible ſtickle-banck of my enemies, is as buſie nibbling about my fame, as if I were a deade man throwne amongeſt them to feede vpon.1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC, page 1

stickleback meaning in Tamil

stickleback in Tamil

நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும்

Synonyms of stickleback

Forms of stickleback

pluralsticklebacks

Origin of stickleback

From dialectal stickle (“a prickle, spine, sting”), from Old English sticel + bæc. See stick (transitive verb) and compare banstickle.

Words formed from stickleback

Phrases with stickleback

Questions about stickleback

What does stickleback mean?
Stickleback means any one of numerous species of small fish of the family Gasterosteidae. The back is armed with two or more sharp spines. They inhabit both salt and brackish water, and construct nests from weeds.
What is stickleback in Tamil?
Stickleback in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும். See Stickleback meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is stickleback?
Stickleback is a noun.
What is the plural of stickleback?
The plural of stickleback is sticklebacks.

Words near stickleback in the dictionary

  1. stickjaw
  2. stickjaws
  3. sticklac
  4. Stickland
  5. stickle
  6. stickleback
  7. sticklebacks
  8. sticklebag
  9. sticklebags
  10. stickled
  11. Sticklepath

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stickleback (page history and authors); stickleback (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

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