stickle

Inside, posters with the Communist Party hammer and stickle emblem featured slogans that read: “Safeguarding the Party and the country’s secrets is every citizen’s required duty.”

Rice’s situation — the stickling intruder bent on curtailing the freedom of action customarily enjoyed by denizens of a backwater — may be nothing new to readers of suspense fiction, but Rice himself is full of surprises.

"It is just about stickling to your systems and trusting in the bubble you are in."

Browne's Pastoral, "The Squirrel Hunt," we read of— "Patient anglers, standing all the day Near to some shallow stickle, or deep bay."

This is seen in their way of stickling for accuracy when others repeat familiar word-forms.