Meaning
To hold firmly to a position, opinion or course of action despite pressure, criticism or creeping doubt; to refuse to be talked out of what you believe is right. Works with 'stick', 'stuck' and 'sticking', and serves equally as advice ('stick to your guns') and as praise after the fact ('she stuck to her guns'). Approving in tone; implies courage and conviction, though it can shade into stubbornness depending on the speaker's view. Regional use: General English; 'stand to one's guns' persists chiefly in British English.
Origin
The expression began as the British 'stand to one's guns' (earlier still the singular 'stand to one's gun'), an artillery image of a gunner's obligation to remain at his post rather than abandon his gun. Christine Ammer's Fighting Words cites Boswell writing in 1769 that 'Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage in defense of amorous ditties', and Titelman's proverb dictionary traces the phrase to Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson - an 18th-century start that is widely repeated but rests on secondary reporting. The American 'stick' form is noted in the 1839 novel Ten Thousand a Year and credited to Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39) by The Phrase Finder; the American Heritage idiom dictionary dates the figurative use to the mid-1800s. Britain long retained 'stand', while 'stick' became the standard American and eventually the general form.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- stand by your guns
- stand to your guns
- stick by your guns
- stood to her gun
Usage Examples
- The board offered her a compromise, but she stuck to her guns and the original design was built.
- If you believe the safety report, stick to your guns in tomorrow's meeting.
- Despite heckling from the crowd, the panellist stuck to his guns and finished his argument.