Stickler

One who obstinately maintains some custom or opinion; as a stickler for Church government. (See below.)

A stickler about trifles. One particular about things of no moment. Sticklers were the seconds in ancient single combats, very punctilious about the minutest points of etiquette. They were so called from the white stick which they carried in emblem of their office.

“I am willing … to give thee precedence, and content myself with the humbler office of stickler.”—Sir Walter Scott: Fair Maid of Perth, chap. xvi.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.