Stalk

How to spell stalk

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stalk

What does stalk mean?

1. nounThe main stem or supporting stalk of a plant, or a similar slender supporting part.
2. verbTo follow or approach a person or animal stealthily, often persistently and threateningly.

Stalk in a sentence

• noun

  She trimmed the woody stalk before placing the rose in the vase.

• verb

  The lioness will stalk her prey for several minutes before charging.

• noun

  Each stalk of celery was washed and chopped for the soup.

• verb

  Police warned the man not to stalk his former partner online.

Where does stalk come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Stalk reaches modern English along two related native paths. The noun, meaning the stem of a plant, appears in Middle English as 'stalke' and is generally taken as a diminutive of an Old English word related to 'stale', meaning a rung, post, or handle, so the original idea was a slender upright support. The verb, meaning to move stealthily, comes from Old English 'bestealcian', to walk cautiously or creep, and it is closely tied to the verb 'steal', sharing the sense of moving quietly and unseen. Over time the hunting use, to track game by creeping toward it, broadened into the modern sense of following a person obsessively. The spelling trap is the silent 'l': stalk rhymes with walk and talk, and like those words the 'l' is written but not sounded. Curiously, the plant noun and the creeping verb were probably separate words that converged on the same spelling, which is why one word covers such different ideas.

How the word is built

• stalk (a single native root; the silent 'l' is part of the cluster '-alk', as in walk and talk)