Stiff

How to spell stiff

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stiff

What does stiff mean?

1. adjectiveNot easily bent or moved; firm and rigid.
2. adjectiveCold, formal, or awkward in manner rather than relaxed.
3. verbTo cheat someone by failing to pay or tip what is owed.

Stiff in a sentence

• adjective

  The new leather boots felt stiff until she broke them in.

• adjective

  The interview felt stiff and the candidate never seemed to relax.

• verb

  The rude customer tried to stiff the waiter on the bill.

• adjective

  His neck was stiff after sleeping on the train overnight.

• adjective

  His reply was polite but stiff, with no real warmth behind it.

• verb

  Some clients will stiff a freelancer rather than settle the invoice.

Where does stiff come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from the Old English stif, which meant rigid, hard, or unbending, and it belongs to the native Germanic layer of English rather than the Latin or French borrowings. It has close cousins across the Germanic family, including the Dutch stijf and the German steif, all carrying the same idea of something that does not flex. The deeper root has been traced to an ancient Indo-European base meaning to be firm or to crowd together densely, which also fed Latin words about being packed tight. Over the centuries the literal sense of physically rigid branched out into figurative uses: a stiff manner became cold or formal, a stiff drink became strong, and a stiff price became hard to bear. Because it is an old, short native word, the spelling has stayed simple and stable, with the only mild trap being the doubled final consonant typical of short Germanic words like stuff, cliff, and off.

How the word is built

• stiff (from Old English stif: rigid, unbending); a single root word with no affixes