English · Idiom Candidate

sticky fingers

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Having a tendency to steal or take things that do not belong to you

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

thường hay đánh cắp hoặc lấy những thứ không thuộc về mình

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: fingers that stick

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

She was wearing a tweed check suit in shades of lovat green and brown and she didn't want his sticky fingers on it — or worse.

But if this motion is successful and a working party is established, one of the conclusions that we might reach is that General Secretaries should keep their sticky fingers off shops steward's commissions.

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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Topics: Hands

Common questions

What does “sticky fingers” mean?

Having a tendency to steal or take things that do not belong to you Literally: fingers that stick

Is “sticky fingers” formal or informal?

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

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