Glue

How to spell glue

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce glue

What does glue mean?

1. nounA sticky substance used to join surfaces or hold things together.
2. verbTo fasten or join something using an adhesive, or to fix firmly in place.

Glue in a sentence

• noun

  A drop of glue held the broken handle in place.

• verb

  He tried to glue the torn pages back into the old book.

• noun

  The children spread glue across the cardboard before adding glitter.

• verb

  Workers had to glue the laminate sheet to the worktop.

Where does glue come from?

Language of origin: French

Glue came into English in the 1300s from the Old French word glu, which named the sticky paste known as birdlime that was smeared on twigs to trap small birds. That French word traces back to the Late Latin glus, with the stem glutem, meaning a sticky substance or paste. The same Latin root survives in the modern word gluten, the sticky protein in wheat, so glue and gluten are distant relatives that both name something tacky and binding. The simple spelling, with its silent terminal e and the -ue ending, mirrors the older French form glu rather than any English pattern, which is why the word looks slightly unusual for such an everyday object. From the original carpenter's and bird-catcher's paste, the meaning broadened to cover any adhesive and, by extension, the act of sticking things together.

How the word is built

• glue (single root, from Late Latin glus, glutem: a sticky paste); no prefix or suffix