sticky
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈstɪki/
rhymes: -ɪki
Forms: form: stickier
form: stickiest
Etymology: From stick + -y.
Senses: examples: text: Is this tape sticky enough to stay on that surface?
text: Particularly sticky books are cleaned with methylated spirits.
ref: 2016 June 5, Thomas Manch, “CuriousCity: What happens to my library books when I return them?”, in Stuff, archived from the original on 04 May 2019:
glosses: Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance.
examples: text: This is a sticky situation. We could be in this for weeks if we're not careful.
text: 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.
ref: 1989 December 24, Abe Rybeck, “Liberation Without Permission, Pleasure Without Apology”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 5:
text: 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.
ref: 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 27 May 2023:
glosses: Difficult, awkward.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 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 13 Oct 2022:
glosses: Of a death: unpleasant, grisly.
examples: text: The baby was due in December and the hot, sticky August weather was making Jane uncomfortable.
ref: 2008, Robert K. Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball:
glosses: Of weather: hot and windless and with high humidity, so that people feel sticky from sweating.
examples: text: Love you and miss you and wish you all the sticky things one wishes at this season for someone one loves.
ref: 1981 December 27, “Robert Bobbie Bob, Inc (personal advertisement)”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 23, page 18:
glosses: Mawkish, sentimental.
examples: text: a sticky price; sticky wages
topics: business
finance
glosses: Tending to stay the same; resistant to change.
examples: text: We should make the printing direction sticky so the user doesn't have to keep setting it.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: Persistent.
raw_tags: of a setting
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: Appearing on all virtual desktops.
raw_tags: of a window
glosses: Fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
raw_tags: of threads on a bulletin board
examples: text: A woman has come to me with the complaint that her website is not sticky: 70% of the visits last 30 seconds or less.
glosses: Compelling enough to keep visitors from leaving.
raw_tags: of a website
examples: text: What's something that is brown and sticky? A stick
glosses: Resembling or characteristic of a stick.
Synonyms: sense: able or likely to adhere
word: claggy
word: tenacious
word: glutinous
word: adhesive
sense: hot, windless and humid
word: close
word: muggy
word: sultry
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
Related terms: tacky