Sticker

How to spell sticker

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sticker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sticker mean?

1. nounA small piece of paper or plastic with adhesive on one side, used to label or decorate a surface.

Sticker in a sentence

• She peeled the price sticker off the new mug.

• Every parcel needs a fragile sticker on the lid.

Where does sticker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the verb 'stick', which descends from the Old English stician, meaning 'to pierce, to stab, or to remain fixed in place'. That verb belonged to a broad family of Germanic words about jabbing and clinging, and over centuries it absorbed the two related ideas of something sharp being thrust in and something staying firmly attached. The agent suffix -er, also native to English, turns a verb into a noun for the thing that performs the action, so a 'sticker' was originally simply anything that sticks. The modern sense of a small adhesive label or decal only became common in the twentieth century, once gummed and self-adhesive paper made such labels an everyday object. The spelling is wholly regular, which is exactly why the doubled 'k' sound after a short vowel and the unstressed -er ending occasionally trip up writers who rush.

How the word is built

• stick (from Old English stician: to pierce, adhere)
• -er (noun suffix: thing that does something)