glom
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to steal.
-
to catch or grab.
-
to look at.
noun
verb phrase
verb
-
to attach oneself to or associate oneself with
-
to acquire, esp without paying
Etymology
Origin of glom
1895–1900, compare Scots glaum, glam to snatch at, glammis jaws of a vise, apparently < Scots Gaelic glàm to grab, clutch, influenced by clam 2
Explanation
To figuratively grab or seize something is to glom onto it. A local newspaper might simply glom onto whatever stories the larger national papers are covering. While you can also use glom to simply mean "steal," as when a pickpocket gloms your wallet in the subway, today we often use this verb to describe a kind of latching on to an idea, issue, or topic. If polls show most voters care about income inequality, every single candidate is likely to glom onto this theme in some way. The "steal" meaning is oldest, an American word borrowed from the Scottish glaum.
Vocabulary lists containing glom
English Words Derived from Gaelic
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One Crazy Summer
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Posted
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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:
These days, a horror film must also be a blistering allegory for real life, with plenty of subtextual significance for the thinking viewer to glom onto.
From Salon ● Mar. 29, 2026
AGEs arise when blood sugar is poorly controlled and elevated levels of sugar molecules known as glucose begin to glom onto nearby proteins including collagen -- a key structural component of the extracellular matrix.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 1, 2024
These nasty, bloodsucking parasites glom on to you when you least suspect it.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 7, 2023
It’s an apt curtain raiser for a 1994-95 season in which newness and sameness glom together indistinguishably, but “thirtysomething” glistened from its inception with a seductive uniqueness that this latest series does not initially share.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2022
She says it’s because I’m “the right person for the job,” but I know she’s just trying to glom off my reputation as the main guy behind the paper chain project.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
Villarreal: The way people like glommed onto it, like it was all over TikTok with captions like, “This is me in my kitchen.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2025
The boldest Bitcoin and crypto advocates, including Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, have glommed on to this philosophy.
From Slate ● May 2, 2024
Subtle shifts in the spacecraft’s radio communications with Earth will let researchers map the asteroid’s gravity field, which will reveal whether Psyche is a uniformly dense hunk of metal or glommed together from rubble.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 13, 2023
Seemingly overnight, TikTokers glommed on to the prompt “If the multiverse is real, I hope there’s one where …” and imagined alternate timelines for their lives.
From New York Times ● Mar. 14, 2023
Brad glommed him glumly in the gloaming, with more than a glimmer of gloomy foreboding.
From The Sloths of Kruvny by Fearing, Vern
Wall Street is glomming on to yet another acronym inspired in part by Mexican cuisine.
From MarketWatch ● May 9, 2026
It is alienating, and you wonder what it is, and whether it’s genuine or just a way of publicly glomming on to the perceived grievances and resentments of his supporters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
Regardless of the effect of glomming on or not, I think at the end of the day, it’s really, really good.
From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2024
The pairing of the previous version of the bill, coupled with Newsom's puzzling Skittles example led to the internet glomming onto the rainbow candies as a prized, yet incorrect, example.
From Salon ● Oct. 18, 2023
But his narrowed eyes bounce off me, glomming on to something beyond.
From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
Definitions 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.
