The word 'style' has a journey from the concrete to the abstract, rooted in the act of writing. Its ultimate ancestor is the Latin stilus, a sharp, pointed instrument used for writing on wax tablets. This tool's name, likely from an ancient root meaning "to prick," became a metonym for the distinctive manner of writing produced by it. Over centuries, through Old French, the term broadened in English to signify characteristic manner or mode in any activity, from art and dress to behavior and design, while retaining its core sense of a distinctive and identifiable form.

The word is a simplex form. It entered English from Old French stile, style, which derived from Latin stilus meaning "a pointed instrument for writing," "manner of writing," "mode of expression." The Latin term is of uncertain origin, possibly from the Proto-Indo-European root (s)teig- meaning "to prick, stick, pierce."