1 Definition
Having a thick, sticky consistency, like glue or syrup; adhesive and slow moving.
2 In Use
The old bottle of cough syrup had gone viscid and clung stubbornly to the spoon.
3 Word Origin
viscum Lat. · mistletoe, birdlime → viscidus Lat. · sticky, glutinous → viscid 17th century English
Viscid descends from the Latin viscum, the word for mistletoe and for the sticky birdlime that Romans made by boiling its berries down to a paste used for trapping small birds. From this came viscidus, an adjective meaning sticky or glutinous, describing anything with that same clingy, slow moving texture. English scholars adopted the term in the early seventeenth century, mostly in scientific and medical writing, to describe fluids and substances that resisted easy flow.
💡Fun Fact
Viscid shares its root with the more common word viscous, though the two took slightly different paths into English and settled into overlapping but not identical usage, with viscous now dominating everyday speech about thick liquids while viscid persists in botanical and medical contexts describing sticky plant secretions or bodily fluids. Botanists still use viscid constantly to describe the sticky glandular hairs found on plants like sundews and certain petunias, which trap insects or simply discourage them from climbing the stem. The word's ancient connection to birdlime is a reminder that humans have been exploiting nature's stickiest substances for practical purposes long before synthetic adhesives existed.