glue
Americannoun
-
a hard, impure, protein gelatin, obtained by boiling skins, hoofs, and other animal substances in water, that when melted or diluted is a strong adhesive.
-
any of various solutions or preparations of this substance, used as an adhesive.
-
any of various other solutions or preparations that can be used as adhesives.
verb (used with object)
-
glues,
present (3rd person singular)
-
glued,
past participle, past
-
gluing
present participle
noun
-
any natural or synthetic adhesive, esp a sticky gelatinous substance prepared by boiling animal products such as bones, skin, and horns
-
any other sticky or adhesive substance
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
gluesimple
-
gluessimple
-
have gluedperfect
-
has gluedperfect
-
am gluingprogressive
-
are gluingprogressive
-
is gluingprogressive
-
have been gluingperfect progressive
-
has been gluingperfect progressive
Past
-
gluedsimple
-
had gluedperfect
-
was gluingprogressive
-
were gluingprogressive
-
had been gluingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of glue
1300–50; (noun) Middle English glu, gleu < Old French glu < Latin glūt- (stem of glūs ); cognate with Greek gloiós gum, anything sticky; (v.) Middle English glywen, glewen, derivative of the noun
Explanation
Glue is a liquid adhesive, used to stick two items together. A little kid may use Elmer's glue to decorate an art project, and you may use Krazy Glue to repair a mug's broken handle. Whatever the case, you hope the glue sticks. Most glue comes in a squeeze bottle and is used in small drips and lines to paste one material to another, but some glue comes in solid sticks that aren't as messy. When you stick one thing to another with glue, you glue it. The Old French source of glue is glu, from the Latin gluten, which means both "glue" and "beeswax."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The two most advanced types of protein degraders are known as Protacs, or proteolysis targeting chimeras, and molecular glue.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
I published one of the first R.E.M. fanzines, sitting at my kitchen table in my third-floor Hoboken tenement walkup with an X-Acto knife and a glue stick.
From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026
Doncic and returning guard Austin Reaves are the glue that holds the puzzle together.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2026
He believes the direct Trump-Xi bond is the glue that is holding together "the most complex and the most consequential relationship in the world".
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
I’ve got glue, Mom’s baking soda, a four-pound box of borax, and several vials of food coloring.
From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper
In 2012, Verdine launched a biotech, Warp Drive Bio, to look for molecular glues out in the wild.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Nvidia glues everything together with software called CUDA, short for “compute unified device architecture.”
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
But despite its water-sensitive glues and exposed hydraulics, the seahorse completed its route intact.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2026
Restoring a Rothko painting is a difficult task because "Rothko's mixture of pigments and resins and glues were quite complex", Mr Helm said.
From BBC ● Apr. 28, 2025
If you sit on them too long in the summer while wearing shorts, the plastic nearly glues to your legs.
From "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
And Taylor Farms would certainly top the list for anyone glued to a toilet bowl lately, thanks to the company’s alleged indiscretion handling lettuce laced with the “explosive diarrhea” parasite.
From Salon ● Aug. 19, 2026
Dogs snored next to their owners, who were glued to their phones, screens lighting up weary faces.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
When she recovered her porcelain figures from her Altadena home, with bits of her studio forever glued to their surface, she wondered what would happen if she refired them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
"It's this common misconception that young people always want to be inside, glued to their phones," Henry smiles.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
The addition of the ion was critical: with the solution supplemented with magnesium, the ribosome remained glued together, and Brenner and Jacob finally purified a minuscule amount of the messenger molecule out of bacterial cells.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
He likens what the group is doing to “building a puzzle out of thousands of other puzzles, gluing it together to make a new thing.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
This could lead to an overwhelming amount of data for those using the app, gluing users to their smartphones.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2025
Other recent protests have involved activists blocking highway traffic in various parts of Italy, and gluing hands of activists to the protective glass of a Botticelli painting in the Uffizi Gallery.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 7, 2023
They and colleagues also measured birds’ appetites by gluing clay models of caterpillars onto branches.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 19, 2023
Soon, some of them were writing on the envelopes, and others were cutting and curling pieces of tissue, gluing them into flower shapes, and stringing them together to form fluffy garlands.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
