flypaper
US/ˈflaɪˌpeɪpɚ/
flypaper noun: a strip of paper coated with a sticky, often poisonous, substance that catches and kills flies that land on it.
Noun
flypaper (countable and uncountable, plural flypapers)
- A strip of paper coated with a sticky, often poisonous, substance that catches and kills flies that land on it.
- "What did I tell you? The thing clings like a flypaper," Josella observed to me.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 105
- Synonyms:
- fly ribbon
Verb
flypaper (third-person singular simple present flypapers, present participle flypapering, simple past and past participle flypapered)
- To cause something to become stuck with, or as if with, flypaper.
- He gets flypapered by a task that should be turned over to a subordinate.1967, Auren Uris, Keeping young in business, page 134
- Cover painting that flypapered the eyes were very important to G-8 sales, and Frederick Blakeslee's mixing of fantasy with the realistic texture of machines had a hypnotic effect on impressionable coin-holders.1970, Cross & Cockade Journal - Volume 11, page 373
Examples of flypaper in a sentence
- In 'The Vertical Ladder," a hapless adolescent is flypapered fast in perpetuity, a mean little speck, on the mast of implacability.1996, Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, Life and Limb: Selected Tales of Peril, Predicament, and Dire Distress, page 20:
- Hysterical parties on her dorm floor concussed the hallways with music and produced a semi-permanent layer of trodden chips flypapered onto the carpet by spilled beer.2010, The Malahat Review - Issues 170-173, page 20:
Synonyms of flypaper
- fly ribbon
Forms of flypaper
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | flypapers |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | flypapers |
| present participle | flypapering |
| past participle | flypapered |
| past | flypapered |
Origin of flypaper
From fly + paper.
Words formed from flypaper
- flypaper strip
- flypaper theory
Questions about flypaper
- What does flypaper mean?
- Flypaper means a strip of paper coated with a sticky, often poisonous, substance that catches and kills flies that land on it.
- How do you use flypaper in a sentence?
- In 'The Vertical Ladder," a hapless adolescent is flypapered fast in perpetuity, a mean little speck, on the mast of implacability.
- What part of speech is flypaper?
- Flypaper can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce flypaper?
- Flypaper is pronounced /ˈflaɪˌpeɪpɚ/ (US).
- What is the plural of flypaper?
- The plural of flypaper is flypapers.
Words near flypaper in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: flypaper (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “flypaper.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flypaper. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.