stitch
Pluralstitches
Verbstitches, stitching, stitched
Pluralstitches
Formsstitches, stitching, stitched
- 1A single pass of the needle in sewing, or the loop or turn of thread that it leaves behind.
She pushed the needle through for one last stitch and knotted the thread.
The tailor pulled out the crooked stitches and sewed the cuff again.
Note
Each pass of the needle is, in origin, a jab: Old English stiċe meant a prick, a puncture or a thrust with a pointed tool, from a root meaning "to stab, pierce." The same word already named a pricking sensation and a pain in the side, which is why one noun covers both the thread in a seam and the ache under the ribs.
- 2To sew, or to join things together or attach one thing to another with stitches.
Volunteers stitch the folded pages of each pamphlet together along the spine.
She stitched a name label into the collar of every school sweater.
Similarsew
- 3A sharp, intense pain felt just below the ribs, typically set off by exercise or by laughing.
She slowed to a jog, pressing a hand against the stitch under her ribs.
He laughed so long at his brother's impression that he gave himself a stitch.
Note
Runners and laughers get one, have one or give themselves one: I've got a stitch. The word also works without an article, as in after about fifteen minutes I got terrible stitch, which treats the pain as a condition rather than a single bout.
- 4A particular arrangement of stitches in sewing, or a method of stitching in a certain way or style.
She outlined the leaves in a neat chain stitch and filled the petals with satin stitch.
Which stitch should I use for a seam that has to stretch?
- 5In knitting, a single turn of yarn around the needle, or one loop or link of yarn.
She cast on sixty stitches and began the first row of the sweater.
If a stitch slips off the needle, catch it with a crochet hook before it unravels down the rows.
Similarloop
Note
Knitters handle stitches as loops sitting on the needle, things to be counted, lost and recovered. To drop a stitch is to let one slip off; to take one up is to get it back onto the needle. Where a sewing stitch is a pass of the needle through cloth, this one is a loop the needle holds.
- 6To combine separate parts into a single whole, or to include something within one.
Negotiators spent the weekend stitching together a deal both parties could accept.
Officials hope to stitch the scattered villages into a single school district.
Similarcombine, cobble, piece, merge, unite
Note
Figurative stitching works on large, scattered things: land management, a city's rail map, a story worshippers are drawn into. It runs with together, into and back, and back implies a whole that once came apart, as in Susan Charnley, Thomas E. Sheridan and Gary P. Nabhan's Stitching the West Back Together (2014), or Peter Plisner in RAIL (2025) on stitching parts of a city back into the commuter rail map.
- 7To put stitches into something, especially to sew it so that a continuous line of stitches shows on the surface.
The tailor stitched the shirtfront in close parallel rows that showed clearly against the white linen.
Saddlers stitch the leather by hand so that a neat, even line runs along every edge.
Similarsew
Note
The verb comes down its own line, from Old English stiċċian and a Germanic verb meaning "to stab, stick, prick," with the noun steering it toward the needle. In this use the stitches are meant to be seen: to stitch a shirt bosom is to run an unbroken line of them across the front, not merely to fasten pieces as the plain joining sense does.
- 8A particular arrangement of stitches in knitting, or a method of knitting in a certain way or style.
Many beginners start with garter stitch because every row is knitted the same way.
The knitting pattern switches to a ribbed stitch at the cuffs so they hold their shape.
- 9Any part of a fabric or of clothing, however small.
By the time we reached the cabin, the rain had soaked every stitch of clothing we owned.
My closet is full, and I still don't have a stitch to wear to the wedding.
Note
Conversation keeps it in a few set frames. After a negative it means nothing at all: not a stitch on is naked, and the Smiths' "This Charming Man" (1983) uses it of having no clothes at all. After every, it stresses that nothing was spared, as in wet every stitch of clothes. The negative frame is old: Thomas Keightley's Fairy Mythology (1828) has "you have not left a stitch on me."
- 10On TikTok, to incorporate an existing video into a new one, producing a collaborative clip that plays the two in sequence.
Her question about first jobs went viral, and stitched videos full of people's answers kept appearing in her feed.
If you stitch my video, tag me in the caption so I can watch your reply.
Note
TikTok's verb doubles as the name of the tool: Rachel Ellison, writing in 2023, explains that "Stitch is a creation tool." Its object can be your own video as well as someone else's. The woman Ellison describes plans to "stitch this" once she knows whether the date becomes a relationship. Stitched also works as an adjective, paired with another platform verb in Brian Boxer Wachler's Influenced (2022): "duetted or stitched videos."
- 11On TikTok, an incorporation of an existing video into a new one, producing a collaborative clip that plays the two in sequence.
Her TikTok drew thousands of comments, and the stitches answering her question were even funnier.
In a stitch that racked up two million views, a plumber pointed out everything the original video got wrong.
Note
Writers still introduce it as platform jargon: in 2023 Remy Tumin speaks of "the stitches, as they are called on TikTok." It is counted and listed like comments (a post draws comments and stitches, or more stitches than anyone can count) because each one answers the original in video form. Making one is the matching verb.
- 12To do sewing or needlework as an activity, working with a needle and thread.
Members of the quilting circle stitch and talk for two hours every Thursday.
She has been stitching since dawn to finish the costumes before opening night.
Similarsew
- 13A sharp, piercing pain felt in one particular place anywhere in the body, like the prick of a needle.
A stitch in her temple made her wince every time she bent over the desk.
He complained of stitches in his chest whenever he coughed.
Note
Older writers use it to record a symptom. Gilbert Burnet writes of a man taken "with a cold and with stitches, which was indeed a pleurisy," and Timothy Field Allen's The Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica (1878) records "a sharp stitch in the left side of the head." Unlike the side pain from exercise, it can sit anywhere, and it pluralizes freely: stitches in the chest, stitches near the heart.
- 14In computer graphics, to combine two or more photographs of the same scene into a single image, such as a panorama.
Photographers often stitch together dozens of frames to build one huge image of a city skyline.
Hundreds of drone photos were stitched into a single map of the farm.
Note
Software does the sewing here, and the pieces must be photographs of one scene; that condition narrows the general combining sense into a graphics term. The object can be either end of the job: you stitch the frames together, or you stitch together the finished panorama.
- 15A fastening, typically of thread or wire, passed through the back of a book to join its pages.
The binder replaced the broken stitches along the spine before rebinding the hymnal.
Cheap pamphlets are often held together with a wire stitch through the fold.
- 16The portion of material taken up or spanned by the needle in a single pass.
A blind hem stays hidden only if each stitch catches a thread or two of the outer fabric.
Lengthen the stitch on the machine before you gather the ruffle.
- 17A long, narrow trench cut into the soil by a plow; a furrow.
The oxen turned at the hedge and began a fresh stitch beside the last one.
Now plow down your Weat-stitches, by running the Two-wheel Fallow-Plough three or four times through each Stitch, which will almost level the Ground;
1750, William Ellis, “Of Plowings preparatory for Sofing Lent Crops of Grain, &c. in Chilturn Grounds”Note
This plowing sense is obsolete, and it blurs into its neighbor. Thomas Hale's A Compleat Body of Husbandry says farmers about Dunstable "plow much in Stitches," while some Essex farmers make five stitches to a perch; William Ellis runs the plow three or four times through each stitch. Stitches that add up to a perch sound more like the strip between double furrows than one furrow.
- 18A contortion or twist, as when the face is pulled out of its usual shape.
If you talke / Or pull your face into a ſtich againe, / As I love truth I ſhall be very angry.
1609, Francis Beaumont, John FletcherNote
A face could once be pulled into a stitch, screwed out of its usual shape. In Beaumont and Fletcher's The Captaine (1609–1612), to "pull your face into a stich againe" is enough to make the speaker "very angry." The meaning is obsolete, so keep it for quoting or period pastiche; in an old play, a stitch in a face is a grimace, not a sharp local pain.
- 19To weld pieces together by means of a series of spot welds that connect with or overlap one another.
- 20Any stretch of space that someone or something passes over; a distance.
- 21The strip of ground lying between two double furrows in plowed land.
- 22In agriculture, to work a piece of land so that its surface is formed into ridges.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English stiche, from Old English stiċe ('a prick, puncture, stab; a pricking feeling; a stitch; a pain in the side; a sting'). This came from Proto-West Germanic *stiki and Proto-Germanic *stikiz ('prick, piercing, stitch'), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- ('to stab, pierce'). It is related to Dutch steek, German Stich, and Old English stician ('to stick, stab, pierce, prick'), and so to English stick; through the same root it is also related to Czech steh, Polish ścieg, and Russian стежок (stežok).
From Middle English sticchen or stichen, from Old English *stiċċan or stiċċian, from Proto-Germanic *stikjaną ('to stab, stick, prick'). Its development was influenced by the noun stitch.