A joystick is an upright handle that you hold and move to steer something. Push it, pull it, or lean it, and the machine follows. Pilots used it first on airplanes. Game players later used the same kind of stick to move a character, a car, or a plane on a screen. Some big machines and wheelchairs use one too. A flat gamepad with buttons and small thumb sticks is not quite the same thing, though people sometimes call any game controller a joystick. In games, the word now often means that stick-shaped controller, not the airplane part. The name is joy plus stick, from about 1910, when it was written joy-stick and meant the control stick on a plane. Why joy? Nobody is sure — it may have been a playful name. Do not build a story on that part.