stonelike demeanor
- noun
- /ˈstoʊnˌlaɪk dɪˈmiːnər/
:
actitud pétrea
- Despite the bad news, he maintained a stonelike demeanor throughout the meeting.
Examples
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Interviewers found his stonelike demeanor intimidating and hard to interpret.
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Her stonelike demeanor concealed any sign of excitement or disappointment.
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She had a stonelike demeanor during the meeting.
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His stonelike demeanor made it hard to read his feelings.
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Despite the challenging questions, he maintained a stonelike demeanor that revealed nothing.
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Her stonelike demeanor during the review left the team unsure of her true thoughts.
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The actor's stonelike demeanor throughout the performance captivated the audience's attention.
Synonyms
1
6.4
Someone who shows no pity or kindness to others
A hard, cold way of acting that shows no emotion
A state of not showing strong feelings when good or bad things happen
A way of behaving that is cold and unfriendly
A very cold, unfriendly way of behaving that keeps others away
A stiff, awkward way of acting without showing emotion
Antonyms
How Emotionless
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'stonelike' (having the qualities of stone) + 'demeanor' (a person's behavior or outward manner), yielding an emotionless or unresponsive appearance. This adjective+noun compositional pattern and the ‘stone’ metaphor are cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The phrase stonelike demeanor comes from the image of a statue: a person with a face as still as stone and a quiet demeanor that never shows feeling. That's why it is used to say someone looks 'emotionless' or 'unresponsive'.