Brewer's: Sty

or Stye. Christ styed up to heaven. Halliwell gives sty = a ladder, and the verb would be to go to heaven, as it were, by Jacob's ladder. The Anglo-Saxon verb stigan means to ascend.

The beast Thought with his winges to stye above the ground.

Spenser: Faerie Queene, bk. i. canto xi. 25.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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