Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance.
Is this tape sticky enough to stay on that surface?
Particularly sticky books are cleaned with methylated spirits.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:
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Difficult, awkward.
This is a sticky situation. We could be in this for weeks if we're not careful.
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.1989 December 24, Abe Rybeck, “Liberation Without Permission, Pleasure Without Apology”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 5:
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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.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:
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Of a death: unpleasant, grisly.
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.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:
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Of weather: hot and windless and with high humidity, so that people feel sticky from sweating.
The baby was due in December and the hot, sticky August weather was making Jane uncomfortable.2008, Robert K. Fitts, Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball:
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Mawkish, sentimental.
Love you and miss you and wish you all the sticky things one wishes at this season for someone one loves.1981 December 27, “Robert Bobbie Bob, Inc (personal advertisement)”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 23, page 18:
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Business, Finance Tending to stay the same; resistant to change.
Slang Sticky-icky; marijuana, especially the sticky, resin-covered buds.
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.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 268:
Still smoking sticky, it ain't no other option / Not for made niggas, and I'm never stopping2011 April 12, “Made Men”performed by Rick Ross:
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As drunk as I was, all I could think about was getting some sticky down my lungs.2014, Jagada Chambers, Based on a True Story: