A fun look at the family of "stecken", what a plug has to do with hiding and why Latin people "like your pen".
Vocab:
stecken, verstecken, anstecken, das Besteck, der Stecker, die Steckdose
The core idea of this root was:
pointing, pricking, piercing
It’s the origin of words like stick, stitch and steak (which was originally a piece of meat on a stick over the fire) as well as some Latin loanwords like stimulus, instinct, instigate, stigma and style.
The German word “der Stock“, which can be a stick, does NOT belong to this family but rather to the family of *(s)teu- which has a similar theme, but which is much bigger.
