sticker

STIK-ur/ˈstɪkɚ/UK · AUSSTIK-uh/ˈstɪkə/

15 meanings of sticker

1
nouncountable
A label or decal with a sticky back that can be attached to a surface.
He slapped a parking sticker on the windshield.
The fruit still had price stickers on every piece.
Similarlabel, decal, tag
2
noun
The price listed on an item's label, especially the full amount before discounts.
Nobody walks in expecting to pay the sticker on a new sedan.
After negotiating, she paid two thousand below the sticker.
Note
A shift from the object to the number printed on it: the price label itself lends its name to the figure it shows. Used alone, sticker is shorthand for sticker price, and it lives in the talk of bargaining. Car buyers are told to know the sticker and the invoice price, setting the posted figure against the one beneath it. The related verb means marking goods at that price.
3
nouncountable
A cartoon image of a character showing an emotion or action, often with text, that can be added to a digital image or message.
He answered the group chat with a crying-laughing sticker.
The messaging app released a new pack of holiday stickers.
Note
Messaging borrowed the word from the paper label. The image is laid over a photo or dropped into a chat the way a decal is pressed onto a surface. Unlike a plain picture, it usually shows a character acting out a feeling, often with a caption. Its collocations copy the physical ones: you send a sticker, or add one to a photo.
4
nouncountable
A tag attached to an item showing its price.
The cashier scanned the sticker to ring up the sale.
Someone had swapped the stickers on two different items.
Similartag, label, ticket
5
verbtransitive
To add adhesive labels or decals to something.
Staff stickered the produce as it came off the truck.
Skaters love to sticker their boards with brand decals.
Similarlabel, tag
Note
The noun has become a regular verb, with the forms stickers, stickering and stickered. Its past participle often works as an adjective, usually with an intensifier in front of it. Cosmopolitan in 2023 describes "a heavily stickered laptop." Heavily stickered is the pattern to reach for when describing a surface covered in decals.
6
nouncolloquialcountable
A burr or seed pod with a surface that clings to clothing or animal fur.
We spent ten minutes pulling stickers out of the puppy's coat.
A sticker worked its way into his sock and jabbed his ankle.
Similarburr
7
nouncountable
A person who sticks with something and refuses to give up; a stayer.
Their coach valued the quiet sticker over the flashy quitter.
The marathon weeds out the dabblers and rewards the stickers.
Similarstayer, stalwart, trouper
Oppositequitter, dabbler
Note
Here the adhering sense of stick becomes praise of character: a sticker stays fastened to a task the way glue stays fastened to a surface. It sits naturally after a verb of judgment, as in he's a sticker, and The Strand Magazine in 1930 pairs it with goer, someone who keeps going to the end. Stayer is its nearest partner. Both praise endurance rather than flair.
8
nouncountable
One that pierces something or holds fast to it.
The jagged splinter turned into a sticker, gripping his glove.
The brambles along the trail are vicious stickers.
Note
The root sense holds both halves of the verb behind it. Stick meant "to pierce" as well as "to adhere", and -er makes the agent. For plants the piercing half wins: the spines of a cholla, a prickly pear or a calafate bush are stickers that pierce flesh. The adhering half is the one behind the adhesive label.
9
verbtransitive
To mark an item with its sticker price.
The store stickered the whole shipment before opening.
Clerks sticker the shelves overnight ahead of the sale.
Similarprice, tag, label
Note
Retail writing pairs it with at and a figure. The Toronto Star in 2009 describes a copper floor mirror "stickered at $449." The natural shape is passive, with an item stickered at a price. The phrase reports the asking amount, close to the listed price, and says nothing about putting a label on, which belongs to the plain verb.
10
nouncountable
A wooden strip set between layers of stacked lumber to allow air circulation and leave a gap for forklift handling.
Each sticker keeps the boards apart so air can dry them evenly.
Crews insert stickers as they build up the lumber stack.
Similarspacer

11
noundatedcountable
Something that puzzles or stumps a person; a difficult problem.
The final exam question was a sticker that left half the class baffled.
"That's what I call a sticker for Wagg!"
1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis.
Similarposer, puzzle, stumper, conundrum, teaser
Note
Here it is the person who gets stuck, because the problem brings their thinking to a halt. Thackeray uses it in The History of Pendennis: "That's what I call a sticker for Wagg!" The word for names the person who is stumped. The usage is dated and colloquial, so in modern writing it reads as period color. For an ordinary hard question, puzzle is the safer word.
12
nouncountable
A small wooden rod in an organ that links a key to a pallet, passing motion along by pushing.
When the organist presses a key, the sticker pushes the pallet open.
The builder fitted new stickers throughout the instrument's action.
Note
This is organ builders' vocabulary. The sticker is one link in the action between a key and its pallet, the valve that lets air into a pipe. What defines it is the direction of its work: it pushes, carrying the key's motion onward in compression. It may be only one stage of that linkage rather than the whole of it.
13
nouncountable
A brand, label, or company, especially one that makes and distributes records.
Their debut album came out on a respected jazz sticker.
The biggest stickers were buying up smaller imprints that year.
Similarlabel, imprint
14
nounslangcountable
A blade attached to the end of a rifle for stabbing in close combat.
The recruits learned to mount the sticker on command.
He drove his sticker into the straw dummy during drill.
Similarbayonet, blade
Note
Soldiers built this slang on the piercing side of stick, the same side that underlies the root sense: a bayonet is what you stick into someone. The word belongs to the barracks talk of World War I and World War II, so it suits period dialogue and memoir. In neutral writing, use bayonet.
15
nounUScountable
A gummed slip of paper affixed to a ballot to substitute a candidate's name; a paster.
Supporters distributed a sticker bearing their candidate's name to paste onto ballots.
Election officials argued over whether the stickers counted as valid votes.
Similarpaster
Note
American electoral politics has its own use for the word. It names the gummed slip a voter fixes to a ballot to vote for a candidate whose name is not printed there. The usual term is paster, and sticker is its synonym. Outside talk of US ballots, readers will take it as the ordinary adhesive label, so make the setting clear.

Practice

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Origin

Formed from "stick" (meaning to pierce, to be fastened, or to adhere) combined with the agent suffix "-er."