Word.ws English Dictionary

came to a sticky end

came to a sticky end is the simple past of come to a sticky end.

Meaning of come to a sticky end

Verb

come to a sticky end (third-person singular simple present comes to a sticky end, present participle coming to a sticky end, simple past came to a sticky end, past participle come to a sticky end)

  1. (UK, idiomatic) To die unpleasantly due to one's actions.
    • Newbery in England and Isaiah Thomas in the U.S.A. insisted that their books for children were of a high moral tone. Children had to be good in order to escape from hell, and most bad children came to a very sticky end.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 139

Questions about came to a sticky end

What is came to a sticky end the simple past of?
Came to a sticky end is the simple past of come to a sticky end.

Words near came to a sticky end in the dictionary

  1. came through
  2. came to
  3. came to a boil
  4. came to a close
  5. came to a head
  6. came to a sticky end
  7. came to a stop
  8. came to an end
  9. came to anchor
  10. came to bat
  11. came to be

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came to a sticky end (page history and authors); come to a sticky end (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “came to a sticky end.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/came_to_a_sticky_end. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.