[STICKING vbl. sb.]
1. A place in which to stick (something). rare.
1578. T. Proctor, Gorg. Gallery, P iiij. Which flower, out of my hand shall neuer passe, But in my harte, shall haue a sticking place.
2. The place in which a thing stops and holds fast.
Only in echoes of the Shaks. example, in which the allusion seems to be to the screwing-up of the peg of a musical instrument until it becomes tightly fixed in the hole.
1605. Shaks., Macb., I. vii. 60. But screw your courage to the sticking place, And wee’le not fayle.
1829. Southey, Sir T. More (1831), II. 136. His rent having been already screwed to the sticking-place.
1883. E. R. Russell, in Fortn. Rev., 1 Oct., 473. But she [Lady Macbeth] recognised the weak fibre in him, and saw that she must keep him to the sticking-place.
3. The lower part of the neck, the JUGULUM. † a. of the human body (obs.). b. of a beast (see quot. 1886).
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 361. The trunke of the hollow vein from the heart to the Iugulum or Sticking-place.
1886. W. Somerset Word-bk., Sticking-place, the point in an animal’s throat where the knife is stuck.
