English · Idiom Candidate

come unstuck

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

to fail or come apart

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

thất bại hoặc tan rã

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: lose adhesive or fastening

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

THE 600 workers at adhesives giant Evostick nearly came unstuck yesterday following a surprise takeover bid.

if you try try and treat one as the other you're gon na come very unstuck

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “come unstuck” mean?

to fail or come apart Literally: lose adhesive or fastening

Is “come unstuck” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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