flypaper

plural flypapers

1. countableuncountableA 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

present singular third person flypapers · participle present flypapering · participle past flypapered · past flypapered

1. 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

   3 more examples

   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

   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