Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🪤 A sticky trap 🪤 To coat with glue
birdlime

birdlime

1 9.9
A sticky substance spread on branches to make small birds stick to them
  • noun
  • /ˈbɜrdˌlaɪm/
  • Archaic
translation icon : pegamento para aves
  • After covering the stick with birdlime, he set it up near the pond where the birds gathered.

Examples

  • The hunter applied birdlime on the tree branches to trap small birds that flew by.

  • The bird figure of stanza 2 (Phaeton falling, the bird snared in the birdlime) is now comfortably nesting.

    Academic text (2003)

  • The common, overlooked by Helen's kitchen window, was a wretched patch of dead grass the size of a boxing ring, edged in dingy concrete, enclosed by apartments' birdlime-smeared backsides.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • They warned him not to touch the birdlime, as it would stick to his fingers and be hard to remove.

Synonyms

lime
vsbirdlime
  • Archaic
9.9

A sticky substance put on branches to catch small birds

is the traditional term for the same trapping substance

Surface Forms

birdlime singular
birdlimes plural

Morphology

birdlime = bird + lime (opaque) = bird + lime

Although analyzable as 'bird' + 'lime' historically meaning a sticky substance, the sense of 'lime' as glue is rare/archaic and learners familiar with 'lime' as the fruit will not reliably infer the meaning.

Etymology

The word birdlime comes from the simple parts bird and lime, where lime once meant 'glue' rather than the fruit. So birdlime is literally 'bird glue', a sticky paste put on twigs to make small birds stick, which explains the word's meaning today.