Other forms: glued, gluing, glues
Glue is a sticky substance that joins two things permanently. A tube of glue, stick it with glue, wood glue.
It is uncountable for the substance and countable for a kind: there are several glues for different jobs. As a verb it is regular — glued, gluing — and note the spelling, which drops the e before -ing. Two figurative uses are common: glued to the television, meaning unable to look away, and the glue that holds something together, meaning whatever keeps a group or a system from falling apart. Adhesive is the technical word and paste is thinner and weaker.
1nounglueA sticky substance used to join things.
“The glue takes about an hour to go off.”
2verbstickTo stick things together with glue.
“He glued the handle back on and it held for a week.”
3nounwhateverWhatever holds a group or system together.
“She was the glue that kept the whole department going.”
glue is an adhesive.
Latin glus comes from a root meaning to stick — the same root as gluten, which is the sticky protein in wheat, and clay, which is the sticky earth. Everything in the family is about things that hold onto your fingers.
Middle English
glew
English, today
glue
From Middle English glew. From Middle English glew, glue, from Old French glu (“glue, birdlime”), from Latin glūs (stem glūt-), from Latin glūten. Related to clay. Partially displaced native līm and ġelīman (“to glue”) (whence modern lime).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA