# sticky
## English
### Etymology

From stick +‎ -y.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈstɪki/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Audio (General Australian):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɪki

### Adjective

sticky (comparative stickier, superlative stickiest)
* Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance.
    Is this tape sticky enough to stay on that surface?
** 2016 June 5, Thomas Manch, “CuriousCity: What happens to my library books when I return them?”, in Stuff‎, archived from the original on 2019-05-04:Particularly sticky books are cleaned with methylated spirits.
* Difficult, awkward.
    This is a sticky situation. We could be in this for weeks if we're not careful.
** 1989 December 24, Abe Rybeck, “Liberation Without Permission, Pleasure Without Apology”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 5:GCN is not just another clipboard of polite press releases. GCN is the sticky questions, the sweet moments, and the dirty stories that make up our lives.
** 2020 June 25, Tegan Bennett Daylight, “My mother taught me the joy of reading. I remember her through books”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-05-27:Among the books Mum brought me to read when I was a child were The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, as well as their author Frances Hodgson Burnett's smash hit, Little Lord Fauntleroy. I haven't met an adult my age who has read this book but I did so several times. It's a sticky book, guided by that strange Victorian obsession with "the little mother" – the same obsession that Virginia Woolf, a child of Victorian parents, grappled with in her diaries and her fiction. Somehow, though, I learned to overlook the archaic, to be open to the oddnesses of different eras, and to read for something else.
* Of a death: unpleasant, grisly.
** 2014 September 8, Michael White, “Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-10-13:Salmond studied medieval Scottish history as well as economics at university so he cannot say he has not had fair warning – it was even more turbulent and bloody than England at that time – and plenty of Scotland's kings and leaders came to a sticky end. If it happens this time, it won't be dull.
* Of weather: hot and windless and with high humidity, so that people feel sticky from sweating.
** 2008, Robert K. Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball:The baby was due in December and the hot, sticky August weather was making Jane uncomfortable.
* Mawkish, sentimental.
** 1981 December 27, “Robert Bobbie Bob, Inc (personal advertisement)”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 23, page 18:Love you and miss you and wish you all the sticky things one wishes at this season for someone one loves.
* (finance) Tending to stay the same; resistant to change.
    a sticky price; sticky wages
* (computing, informal, of a setting) Persistent.
    We should make the printing direction sticky so the user doesn't have to keep setting it.
* (computing, of a window) Appearing on all virtual desktops.
* (Internet, of threads on a bulletin board) Fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
* (Internet, of a website) Compelling enough to keep visitors from leaving.
    A woman has come to me with the complaint that her website is not sticky: 70% of the visits last 30 seconds or less.
* (informal) Resembling or characteristic of a stick.
    What's something that is brown and sticky? A stick

#### Synonyms

* (able or likely to adhere): claggy, tenacious, glutinous; see also Thesaurus:adhesive
* (hot, windless and humid): close, muggy, sultry; see also Thesaurus:muggy

#### Derived terms

* come to a sticky end
* fermented sticky rice
* meet a sticky end
* stickily
* stickiness
* sticky-backed plastic
* sticky-back plastic
* sticky bead argument
* sticky-beak
* sticky beak
* sticky bit
* sticky bomb
* sticky bottle
* sticky bun
* sticky catchfly
* sticky currant
* sticky dog
* sticky end
* sticky-finger
* sticky finger
* sticky-fingered
* sticky fingers
* sticky foam
* sticky-icky
* sticky-note
* sticky note
* sticky-out
* sticky-outy
* sticky platelet syndrome
* sticky rice
* sticky rice wine
* sticky shed syndrome
* sticky situation
* sticky skin syndrome
* sticky-sweet
* sticky tape
* sticky-tape
* sticky toffee pudding
* sticky-up
* sticky-uppy
* sticky wicket
* sticky willy
* Vietnamese fermented sticky rice

#### See also

* tacky

### Noun

sticky (countable and uncountable, plural stickies)
* A sticky note, such as a post-it note.
    Her desk is covered with yellow stickies.
* (Internet) A discussion thread fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
* (manufacturing) A small adhesive particle found in wastepaper.
* (Australia, colloquial) A sweet dessert wine.
* (slang) Sticky-icky; marijuana, especially the sticky, resin-covered buds.
** 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 268:We'd smoked some nice sticky that night and fucked with some Erk and Jerk too, so my head was still cloudy when Pimp came in the room and said get up.
** 2011 April 12, “Made Men”‎performed by Rick Ross:Still smoking sticky, it ain't no other option / Not for made niggas, and I'm never stopping
** 2014, Jagada Chambers, Based on a True Story:As drunk as I was, all I could think about was getting some sticky down my lungs.
* (obsolete, slang, uncountable) Wax.

#### Translations
### Verb

sticky (third-person singular simple present stickies, present participle stickying, simple past and past participle stickied)
* (Internet, bulletin boards, transitive) to fix a thread at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.

#### Translations
### References

* “sticky”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.