Sticker¹

[f. STICK v.¹ + -ER.] One who or that which sticks, in the senses of the verb.

  1.  One who sticks or stabs, esp. one who kills swine by sticking.

a. 1585.  Polwart, Flyting w. Montgomerie, 787. Tyk stickar.

1833.  Hood, Sk. Road, Sudden Death, Wks. 1870, II. 248. Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark, or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker.

1881.  E. Ingersoll, Oyster-Industr. (Hist. Fish. Industr. U.S.), 249. Sticker, an oyster-opener who rests the oyster against the bench while he thrusts the knife between the valves.

  2.  A weapon used for piercing or stabbing as distinguished from cutting or slashing; esp. a sticking-knife, a fishing spear, an angler’s gaff. Chiefly colloq.

1896.  Baring-Gould, Dartmoor Idylls, viii. 188. Go and ax the butcher to lend you his sticker.

1899.  R. Whiteing, No. 5 John St., iv. There warn’t no time to square up to ’im when I see the sticker [pocket knife] in ’is ’and.

1901.  Munsey’s Mag., XXIV. 142/2. Swords or knives can be divided into two classes, the hackers and the stickers.

  3.  One who or something that adheres or remains attached; one who remains constant; one who persists in a task. Const. to, † unto.

1674.  N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 133. Motion or going on by steps, is such a sticker unto body, that it can no more belong to Ghost, than thinking can to that.

1824.  in Spirit Publ. Jrnls. (1825), 516. When wed she’ll change, for Love’s no sticker, And love her husband less than liquor?

a. 1849.  H. Coleridge, Ess. (1851), II. 75. The same class of fastidious wits who in France became Zoilists, in England were the stoutest stickers to Homer.

1869.  M. Arnold, Cult. & Anarchy, Pref. 55. For we are fond stickers to no machinery, not even our own.

1895.  Westm. Gaz., 30 April, 6/1. Experience proves that these are the best ‘stickers,’ as, knowing the difficulties, they do not expect to strike gold immediately, but are content to search for the metal.

  b.  A commodity that does not find a ready sale. Also transf. (see quot. 1887). colloq.

1824.  Dibdin, Libr. Comp., 573. I fear it [the book] will be a sticker.

1887.  G. R. Sims, Mary Jane’s Mem., x. 128. Stickers are servants that the [registry] office finds it hard to get places for.

  c.  Sporting. A horse or a person with good staying power; a stayer.

1860.  Whyte-Melville, Mkt. Harb., 18. He’s too fast for us, and that’s the truth. Only, to be sure, we have a vast of plough hereabout, and I never see such a sticker through dirt.

1890.  ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer, x. You’ve got … an out-and-out good back…. I’ll forfeit my month’s wages if he ain’t a sticker, as well.

  d.  Cricket. A batsman who scores slowly and is hard to get out. colloq.

1903.  W. J. Ford, in Cricket (ed. Hutchinson) vi. 190. Louis Hall (the pioneer of stickers).

  e.  A person who stays too long on a visit.

1903.  Farmer, Slang, Sticker, 4 (colloquial), a lingering guest.

  4.  Something that causes a person to stick or to be at a nonplus; a poser. colloq.

1849.  Thackeray, Pendennis, xxv. That’s what I call a sticker for Wagg.

1903.  Farmer, Slang, Sticker, a pointed question, an apt and startling comment or rejoinder, an embarrassing situation.

  5.  U.S. An adhesive label; spec. = PASTER 2.

1872.  De Vere, Americanisms, 270.

1888.  [see PASTER 2].

1888.  C. A. Knight, in Voice (N. Y.), July, 5/4. Terse, pungent quotations, truisms, statistics, etc., be printed on one side of little slips of paper … to be GUMMED and used as ‘stickers’ … on newspaper wrappers, [etc.].

  6.  a. Organ-building. (See quot. 1884.)

1845.  G. Dodd, Brit. Manuf., IV. 160. The ‘under-hammer’ [acts] on the ‘sticker.’

1884.  Encycl. Brit., XVII. 834. [Organ.] The connexion between the keys and their pallets is made by various mechanisms…. Where pressure has to be transmitted instead of a pull, thin but broad slips of wood are used, having pins stuck into their ends to keep them in their places. These are stickers.

  b.  In the pianoforte: = MOPSTICK 2. Also attrib.

1870.  [see MOPSTICK 2].

1885.  C. G. W. Lock, Workshop Rec., Ser. IV. 281/2. To repair a broken sticker hinge, unscrew the button [etc.].

1908.  Times, 19 Feb., 14/4. The first improvement in the pianoforte … was in the sticker action.

  7.  (See quot.) Cf. STICK v.¹ 18 c.

1909.  N. Hawkins’ Mech. Dict., Sticker.—A wood working machine, used on articles of small cross sectional area, such as picture frame moulding, etc.

  8.  Sticker up: One who ‘sticks up’ for something. colloq.

1857.  Borrow, Romany Rye, App. v. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, ‘The hero did not refuse’ [etc.].

  9.  Sticker-up. Australian. a. A bush method of cooking meat by spitting it and setting it to roast. Also attrib.

1830.  Hobart, Town Almanack, 112. Steaks … which he cooked in the mode called in colonial phrase a sticker up.

1852.  Mrs. C. Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, I. iv. 54. Here I was first initiated into the bush art of ‘sticker-up’ cookery.

  b.  A bushranger.

1879.  W. J. Barry, Up & Down, xx. 197. They had only just been liberated from gaol, and were the stickers-up, or highwaymen, mentioned by me before.