adjective
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sticky
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excessively sentimental or emotional
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of icky
An Americanism dating back to 1930–35; of uncertain origin
Explanation
Something that's icky is disgusting and gummy or sticky. When you walk around a busy city all day, you're bound to end up with something icky stuck to the bottom of your shoe. After frolicking through the mud, your dog will be dirty and icky, and a particularly humid summer day can feel icky too. You can also use icky to simply mean "yucky" or "nasty," as when your school cafeteria offers several icky dishes for lunch, like mystery meat and mystery mash. The informal icky is an American invention, from the 1920's slang icky-boo, baby talk for "sick" or "nauseated."
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 premise of the show is people finding love, but that isn't what viewers want, that's boring to watch and gets icky," says Spiers.
From BBC ● May 27, 2026
“It feels so icky to do this, but it’s what you have to do to sound human.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
But over-the-top comments such as "Japanese people are next level" give her an "icky vibe", Kubota told AFP.
From Barron's ● Mar. 24, 2026
But for now, plenty of market signals suggest that it’s OK for investors to live in a home where there are cockroaches in the walls — as icky as it feels.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2025
They are relieved when they leave the icky barn where the little Piggy girl lives.
From "Lucky Broken Girl" by Ruth Behar
It frankly feels ickier now to be rah-rah about the Olympics than it used to be, and the telecasts of Olympic events rarely even nods at those qualms, much less explore them in detail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2021
And she cleans the boss’s office, too, which makes for one of the film’s ickier moments as she dons plastic gloves and scrubs a few stains from his couch.
From Washington Times ● Jan. 29, 2020
He added: “If most folks knew the ins and outs of embalming, I suspect they would find it much ickier in fact than composting.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 26, 2019
The presentations on this show only make it all feel ickier.
From New York Times ● Jul. 11, 2014
When the truth about Harriet’s disappearance does emerge, it’s lurid without being particularly surprising, and the last quarter of the movie goes by in a blur of sensationally icky flashbacks and ickier comeuppances.
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2011
For me, it’s actually the ickiest part of this whole story.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 24, 2026
Still, Park remembers that when producer Syd Lim first read the “Oldboy” script, he was flabbergasted at the movie’s ickiest revelation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2023
The first Romero film I saw was “Creepshow,” the anthology film inspired by EC Comics, with a screenplay by Stephen King; it had one of the ickiest deaths I had ever sat through.
From New York Times ● Jul. 17, 2017
Would you help her track her stolen phone through Manhattan’s ickiest tourist traps?
From Time ● Feb. 17, 2016
True, the dear lady is one of the ickiest prigs who ever put quill to scented paper.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
