stickle
To act as referee or arbiter; to mediate.
obsolete
To argue or struggle for.
archaic
‘She has other people than poor little you to think about, and has gone abroad with them; so you needn’t be in the least afraid she’ll stickle this time for her rights.’
To raise objections; to argue stubbornly, especially over minor or trivial matters.
Miserable new Berline! Why could not Royalty go in some old Berline similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about his vehicle.
To separate, as combatants; hence, to quiet, to appease, as disputants.
obsolete, transitive
Which [question] violently they pursue, / Nor stickled would they be.
Where it comes from
From a variant of stightle (“to order, arrange, direct”), from Middle English stightelen, stiȝtlen, stihilen, stihlen, equivalent to stight (“to order, rule, govern”) + -le (frequentative suffix). For the development of /təl/ to /kəl/, compare huckleberry and dialectal turkle (“turtle”).
Related words
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry stickle (CC BY-SA 4.0).