[General] What does this sentence mean?

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Silverobama

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Hi,

Can you tell me how you understand this sentence?


Breaking the news is going to be sticky.


Thanks a lot
 

birdeen's call

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From The American Heritage Dictionary:

Break
To make known, as news: break a story.

Sticky
Informal Painful or difficult: a sticky situation.

More context could make the explanation more accurate.
 

NikkiBarber

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Birdeen's definitions are correct.

"Breaking the news is going to be sticky" means that it will be difficult to tell someone something. You mostly hear about "breaking the news" when it comes to something negative.
 

Silverobama

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Does it mean "If the news become known, things is going to be sticky"?
 

Barb_D

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My impression is that the person who has to tell the person the news is going to find it uncomfortable.
 

NikkiBarber

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Does it mean "If the news become known, things is going to be sticky"?

Not quite. Person 1 has to tell person 2 a piece of news and person 1 thinks that it will uncomfortable or difficult when he tells it.
 

Silverobama

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My impression is that the person who has to tell the person the news is going to find it uncomfortable.

Can you tell find "what" uncomfortable, find the "news" uncomfortable or find "breaking the news"? Thanks a lot
 

NikkiBarber

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It is the action of telling the news that will be uncomfortable, which means that it is bad news of some kind.
A doctor might say that he has to "break the news" to a patient that he (the patient) has cancer, or you might "break the news" to your friend that you saw his girlfriend with another man. It means that the news is bad and that it will probably upset the person you have to "break it" to.
 

apex2000

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Does it mean "If the news become known, things is going to be sticky"?

If the news becomes known things are going to become sticky.
Your problem here is probably due to news appearing plural wheras it is a collective noun and singular; things is plural.
 

NikkiBarber

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If the news becomes known things are going to become sticky.

I am not sure if apex is simply correcting this sentence or if he confirms that the interpretation is accurate? I disagree with the interpretation and agree with the correction.
It is understandable that this sentence can be complicated to understand, especially since the word "sticky" in this case has nothing to do with adhesives. :-?
"Breaking the news is going to be sticky" doesn't mean that things will become sticky if the news gets out. It means that the act of delivering/telling the news will be difficult in itself.
 

apex2000

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"It means that the act of delivering/telling the news will be difficult in itself."
Yes, it can mean that but it can also mean that after the telling the resulting responses may be sticky.

The OP "Breaking the news is going to be sticky." does put more emphasis on 'breaking' yet without any explanation it could still refer to the result. Compare: breaking the news to John is going to be sticky; breaking the news is going to be sticky for a lot of people.

And the use of 'sticky' is not how we would express this. We might use - difficult, awkward, explosive, inflationary, deflationary, demoralising, debilitating and a lot more whereas we would not use, say, uplifting or similar as an alternative. Sticky would be interpreted as unfavourable.
 
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