Word.ws English Dictionary

sticky-fingered

sticky-fingered adjective: of a person, inclined or prone to steal, especially of engaging in petty theft while handling money or goods. Also the simple past and past participle of sticky-finger.

Adjective

sticky-fingered (comparative more sticky-fingered, superlative most sticky-fingered)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) Of a person, inclined or prone to steal, especially of engaging in petty theft while handling money or goods.
    • Sticky-fingered customers and employees make off with $9 billion in merchandise annually.1990 December 17, “The Five-Fingered Discount”, in Time
    • Well, she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina / She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize1991, “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego”, Sean Altman, David Yazbek (music)
  2. (idiomatic) Skillful in catching or handling the ball, in such games as baseball, football, basketball, etc.
    • Chicago's sticky-fingered defense intercepted five of YA Tittle's passes.1963 December 30, “Bears Win, 14 to 10; Take Title”, in Boston Globe, retrieved 22 Jul 2011, page 13
    • His batting average has hovered in the .330s all season and he has played his usual sticky-fingered defense at second.2007 June 13, Jon Krawczynski, “Twins 7, Braves 3”, in USA Today, retrieved 22 Jul 2011

Also used as

sticky-fingered is also the simple past and past participle of sticky-finger.

Forms of sticky-fingered

comparativemore sticky-fingered
superlativemost sticky-fingered

Questions about sticky-fingered

What does sticky-fingered mean?
Sticky-fingered means of a person, inclined or prone to steal, especially of engaging in petty theft while handling money or goods.
What part of speech is sticky-fingered?
Sticky-fingered is an adjective.

Words near sticky-fingered in the dictionary

  1. sticky-beak
  2. sticky-beaked
  3. sticky-beaking
  4. sticky-beaks
  5. sticky-finger
  6. sticky-fingered
  7. sticky-fingering
  8. sticky-fingers
  9. sticky-icky
  10. sticky-note
  11. sticky-notes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sticky-fingered (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: “sticky-fingered.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sticky-fingered. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.