sticky
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "sticky", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "sticky" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "sticky" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
sticky is anEnglishadj. It means: Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance. Pronounced /ˈstɪki/. It ranks #9,673 in English word frequency. Often confused with stock and stuck.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sticky |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈstɪki/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #9,673 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sticky is 6 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈstɪki/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,673 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for sticky, with forms such as "sitcky", "ssticky", and "stciky". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "stock", "stuck", "stink", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From stick + -y. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is sticky, spelled S-T-I-C-K-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance.
- 2Difficult, awkward.
- 3Of a death: unpleasant, grisly.
- 4Of weather: hot and windless and with high humidity, so that people feel sticky from sweating.
- 5Mawkish, sentimental.
- 6Tending to stay the same; resistant to change.
- 7Persistent.
- 8Appearing on all virtual desktops.
- 9Fixed at the top of the list of topics or threads so as to keep it in view.
- 10Compelling enough to keep visitors from leaving.
- 11Resembling or characteristic of a stick.
Etymology
From stick + -y.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: sitcky,ssticky,stciky,sticcky,stickky,stickyy,sticyk,stikcy,stticky,tsicky
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for sticky
Misspelling Variants of "sticky"
Frequency rank: #9,673 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: