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:
Smashing it would be an icky mess and pesticides are not the way to go, she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
But it also feels a little icky to me.
From MarketWatch ● May 28, 2026
"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
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
The corpuscule’s icky cold fists rained down on her back as they both plummeted to the ground.
From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older
It’s a creepy setup that Muschietti milks for laughs that become queasier and ickier the longer and the more gleefully flamboyant the scene plays out.
From New York Times ● Jun. 14, 2023
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
One of the ickier elements of reality TV dating shows is their tendency to force participants to reveal their deepest traumas in their first 15 minutes of screen time.
From Slate ● Apr. 16, 2020
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
As instantly disposable as a snow cone, “Stuber” melts twice as fast, leaving an even ickier residue.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 9, 2019
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
Would you help her track her stolen phone through Manhattan’s ickiest tourist traps?
From Time ● Feb. 17, 2016
It will be most enjoyable to rabid fans of the movie version, who can feast on the manner in which the Kaplans have set to song all the ickiest morsels of dialogue.
From New York Times ● Jul. 12, 2011
Winston's ickiest godchildren would face off in Alien vs.
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.
