sticking plaster

• stick plaster (UK)

sticking plaster (plural sticking plasters)

1. (New Zealand, British) An adhesive bandage used in dressing wounds

   Synonyms: adhesive bandage, band-aid, Elastoplast

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 3:

     As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.

2. An inadequate solution to a serious problem.
   • 2020 June 3, “Network News: Khan agrees £1.6bn "sticking plaster" for TfL”, in Rail, page 16:

     In a statement, Khan called the deal a sticking plaster and said: "The Government is, in effect, making ordinary Londoners pay the cost for doing the right thing on COVID-19.

• “sticking plaster”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.