Stiffness

How to spell stiffness

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stiffness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stiffness mean?

1. nounThe quality of being rigid and difficult to bend, or a sensation of muscles and joints that resist movement.
2. nounA cold, formal, or awkward quality in someone's behaviour or manner.

Stiffness in a sentence

• The stiffness in her neck made it hard to turn her head.

• A certain stiffness crept into the meeting once the lawyers arrived.

• The stiffness of the new leather boots eased after a week of wear.

• The stiffness of his reply suggested he was still annoyed.

Where does stiffness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word stiff descends from the Old English stif, meaning 'rigid' or 'unbending', which traces back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch stijf and German steif, all carrying the sense of being hard to move or flex. That same ancient root is connected to a Latin relative, stipare, meaning 'to press together tightly', which gives a clue to the underlying idea of packed, unyielding firmness. The abstract noun was formed in English by adding the productive suffix -ness, which has long been the standard way to turn an adjective into the name of a quality or state. The combination of the final double f of stiff with the suffix -ness produces the doubled-letter cluster that writers sometimes second-guess. The word has been used for both physical rigidity and figurative coldness of manner since the medieval period.

How the word is built

• stiff (rigid, not easily bent)
• -ness (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)