glue
Americannoun
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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.
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any of various solutions or preparations of this substance, used as an adhesive.
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any of various other solutions or preparations that can be used as adhesives.
verb (used with object)
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glues,
present (3rd person singular)
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glued,
past participle, past
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gluing
present participle
noun
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any natural or synthetic adhesive, esp a sticky gelatinous substance prepared by boiling animal products such as bones, skin, and horns
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any other sticky or adhesive substance
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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gluesimple
-
gluessimple
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have gluedperfect
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has gluedperfect
-
am gluingprogressive
-
are gluingprogressive
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is gluingprogressive
-
have been gluingperfect progressive
-
has been gluingperfect progressive
Past
-
gluedsimple
-
had gluedperfect
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was gluingprogressive
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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 research found six candidates, but none worked on RAS, so Verdine proposed designing a synthetic glue instead.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Cholesterol helps cells remain attached to one another, functioning like a form of biological glue.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
Is it time to stop using glue and labels on paper?
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
Contracts worth billions of dollars have become the commercial glue holding the AI boom together.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
He paused at the doorway—the smell of paint, plaster, and glue permeated the air.
From "Shooting Kabul" by N. H. Senzai
Nvidia glues everything together with software called CUDA, short for “compute unified device architecture.”
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
When counterfeiters make fake versions—phony name-brand sneakers, for instance—they don’t use the same materials, glues, dyes and paints that the legitimate manufacturer does.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 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
Meanwhile, the Doctorita glues pictures of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse onto the wood.
From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau
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
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
I’ll be glued to my television when kickoff arrives at 3 p.m.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
“Paratha khaa lo. I just cooked it,” Mama tells me, her eyes glued to the television.
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
The craft activity this day involved Popsicle sticks, which the girls were gluing together to make picture frames.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2024
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, both 22, launched two tins of tomato soup on to the painting at the National Gallery in central London, later gluing their hands to the wall beneath it.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2024
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
If the Hercules Cluster is not flying apart, there must be five times more mass there, gravitationally gluing the cluster together, than we see in its galaxies.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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.
