stuck

American  

[stuhk] / stʌk /

verb

1. simple past tense and past participle of stick.

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idioms

1. stuck on, infatuated with.

   He met her only once and is already stuck on her.

stuck British  

/ stʌk /

verb

1. the past tense and past participle of stick 2

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adjective

1. informal baffled or nonplussed

2. slang (foll by on) keen (on) or infatuated (with)

3. informal

   1. to perform (a task) with determination

   2. to attack (a person) verbally or physically

Other Word Forms

• self-stuck
  adjective

Explanation

Stuck describes something that's frozen or fixed in one place and can't be moved. If your foot gets stuck in the mud, it means you can't get your foot out of its messy trap. The lid of a jar can be stuck, and your car can get stuck in traffic; either way, the thing that's stuck isn't going anywhere. You can also use stuck when you can't figure out what to do: you can be stuck on an especially hard math problem or feel stuck in a complicated relationship. The verb stick comes from the Old English stician, pierce or remain fastened.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

stuck

The only thing I can think of that’s worse than getting stuck on Greatest Hits or Top 40 is pushing a button and generating “infinite personalized music” with no human influence.

From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2026

After a minute or so, he plucked 11 tiny ticks from the cloth with tweezers, and stuck them on a lint roller.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026

"I just got stuck into that and started shouting from the rooftops my opinion on things," he said.

From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026

"I've been travelling for three hours... to get to work," said Tetiana Osypenko, a 49-year-old seamstress whose bus was stuck in a traffic jam.

From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026

I stuck my tongue out at Nothing and left him grazing in the road.

From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff