Andrew

Could you tell us what this means?

Yeah.

Excellent.

Well said.

So this word stick, the verb to stick, it's like something is sticky, right?

Like a substance, maybe gum, you know, probably everybody has had the unfortunate experience of stepping on gum on the sidewalk and then it sticks to the bottom of your shoe, right?

It's like when something is sticky and it's attached, that is this verb to stick.

So in the literal sense, the imagery that you described, Indiana, you could imagine a soldier,

fighting a war and sticking to his guns, meaning that he's not quitting the fight, right?

He's out there shooting his gun and in battle and not running away.

So that's like the imagery behind this expression, but that's not what we mean when we use this expression in everyday conversation.

When we use it in everyday conversation with the idiomatic meaning, it just means to refuse to

Changing your mind or changing your plan or decision.

You've got your mind made up, which is another idiom that we use to mean that you've made your decision and you're not changing your mind.

So we can also change this expression to fit the situation that we're talking about, right?

So if our subject is a woman, we could say she is sticking to her guns.

Or if it's a man, he's sticking to his guns, etc., etc.

We can change the pronoun for the situation that we're talking about.

Now maybe we should talk about when we use it.

What kind of situations would you use this expression in, Indiana?