bandaid
bandaid Lexical Profile
bandaid Game Scores & Validity
• noun
North American A small adhesive strip with a gauze pad in the center, used for covering minor cuts, scrapes, or blisters.
"She washed the small paper cut on her finger and covered it with a bandaid."
North American A temporary, superficial, or inadequate fix that fails to address the underlying cause of a problem.
"Short-term loans are merely a bandaid for a business model that is fundamentally unprofitable."
• adjective
North American Serving as a temporary, superficial, or inadequate solution to a deeper problem.
"The committee rejected the proposal as a bandaid measure that ignored the root causes of the budget deficit."
• verb
North American To apply an adhesive bandage to a minor wound, or to patch up a problem temporarily and superficially.
"Instead of rewriting the legacy software, the developers simply bandaided the bugs before the launch."
Word Nuance & Usage
"Band-Aid" is a registered trademark of Johnson & Johnson; in formal writing, "adhesive bandage" or "sticking plaster" is preferred when referring to the medical dressing generically, though lowercase "bandaid" or "band-aid" is widely used in informal contexts and figurative speech.
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in 1920 by Earle Dickson, a cotton buyer for Johnson & Johnson, who combined "band" and "aid" to name the adhesive gauze strips he invented for his wife's frequent kitchen cuts.
Usage Trend
Historical frequency of usage in published text.