sticking plaster

noun — 2 senses

sticking plaster

noun

1

New Zealand, UK An adhesive bandage used in dressing wounds.

As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 3:

2

Idiomatic, Informal An inadequate solution to a serious problem.

In a statement, Khan called the deal a sticking plaster and said: "The Government is, in effect, making ordinary Londoners pay the cost for doing the right thing on COVID-19.2020 June 3, “Network News: Khan agrees £1.6bn "sticking plaster" for TfL”, in Rail, page 16:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.