stickum

stickum

1. A trademarked adhesive powder, paste, or aerosol spray used in sports to improve athletes' grip on various pieces of equipment, such as balls, bats, dumbbells, etc., though its use has been banned in most professional sports. The term has become so ubiquitous in sports that it is often left uncapitalized. The wide receiver was accused of using stickum on his gloves in the championship game. I find I can lift much heavier weights when I spray a little stickum on the bars.
2. slang Any adhesive, such as glue. It's a clean break, at least, so we should be able to fix it with a dab of stickum.
3. slang Any hair product, especially oil or pomade, used to slick one's hair down or hold it in place. He had so much stickum on his hair that not even a tornado would have mussed it up! I hate running my fingers through his hair because they come out covered in stickum.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

stickum

(ˈstɪkəm)
1. n. glue. Put some stickum on this paper and paste it up where it can be seen.
2. n. any thick and sticky substance, especially hair dressing. (see also slickum.) He uses too much stickum on his hair.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • um
  • spray-on
  • paste up
  • paste down
  • spray on
  • in the grip of the grape
  • a grip on (something)
  • grip on (something)
  • lose (one's) grip on (someone or something)
  • lose one’s grip
References in periodicals archive
Today, many football players use special gloves that act a lot like Stickum. These gloves have sticky, rubber-like material on the palms and fingers.
Foul play? Is using high-tech sports gear unfair? You decide
Stickum was soon banned but Hayes continued to dish out such violence that he was dubbed 'Lester The Molester' by his fans.
The cornerstone of the Pats success
"Three pieces," I replied and her machine spewed forth the stickum tags.
Travel Wise?
Mites were prevented from feeding on the cotyledons in treatment 2 by placing a ring of Stickum (Seabright Industries, Emeryville, California, USA) on the stem between the cotyledons and their petioles.
Plant phase change and resistance to herbivory
The tape's stickum has darkened and soaked through the paper, forming discolored bars on the overleaf text, as if someone were highlighting lines ("For in my brain is horror and in my body, wrath") with a nasty, burnt-umber marker.
Jimmy on the east 15th street
Roach Motels (or "Stickum"): Polymer adhesives, delivered by air or on the ground, can "glue" equipment in place and keep it from operating.
Secret weapons for the CNN era
Another preventive measure is applying the stickum "tincture of benzoin" (pronounced BEN-zoh-win), available at drugstores, to the skin before carefully pulling on your tights (avoiding wrinkles).
Foot care for pointe shoes
But one of the narrator's favorite Garp-like touches is his use of Alice Fletcher's speech impediment: "Garp knew about writers who couldn't white" (154); "The good-byes that Garp imagined conducting with Alice were violent scenarios, fraught with Alice's incoherent speech and always ending in desperate lovemaking--another failed resolution, wet with sweat and sweet with the lush stickum of sex, oh yeth" (157); "Did Garp love Alice?
Double discourses in John Irving's 'The World According to Garp.'
(Specialized traps are also sold for codling moths.) You can buy inexpensive commercial traps coated with stickum and a chemical attractant.
The nastiest apple pest in the West
Visitors needed several shopping bags to take home all of the tchotchkes, gimmicks, notepads, stickums, and freebies.
InfoToday 2002--the exhibits