stuffed shirt
3
8.2
- noun
- /stʌft ʃɜrt/
- Offensive
:
estirado
- He is often viewed as a stuffed shirt because of his rigid and formal demeanor at work.
- a bunch of stuffed shirts
Examples
-
In an instant, my son wrote him off as a stuffed shirt, pompous academic who had to make a boastful impression on a group of young students.
Blog text (18) -
My brother, the stuffed shirt, has become a comedian.
Fiction book (1991) -
Listen to me, you stuffed shirt.
-
Maybe I do have a little of the stuffed shirt in me.
Fiction book (1999) -
And here, I was afraid you were going to turn out to be an old stuffed shirt.
Fiction book (1999) -
Don't be an old, stuffed shirt!
-
She's making small talk with a bunch of stuffed shirts and their overdressed wives.
Fiction book (1992) -
He's a stuffed shirt.
-
And I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive… conservative stuffed shirt who was only interested in the theater.
-
True, she had always thought the Lord of Lowhill a somewhat pompous stuffed shirt, but she had seen him several times a year throughout her life, and he had been a good friend of her parents.
Fiction book (1992)
Antonyms
How Pompous
- Offensive
74
7.3
- Offensive
3
8.2
57
5.8
- Formal
394
3.0
194
2.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
stuffed + shirt
The meaning 'a pompous, overly formal person' cannot be derived from the literal constituents: 'stuffed' (physically full) and 'shirt' (an item of clothing) have no compositional relation to personality traits. This is a conventionalized, historically-based idiom (related to senses like 'stuffy' or 'stiff-shirted') and thus unpredictable for a B1 learner who only knows the literal word meanings.
Etymology
The phrase stuffed shirt may come from the image of a man who literally stuffed his shirt with padding so his clothes looked stiff and showy. That stiff, puffed-up picture helps explain why the phrase means someone who is 'too formal' or 'self-important' today.