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View synonyms for stuffed shirt

stuffed shirt

noun

  1. a pompous, self-satisfied, and inflexible person.


stuffed shirt

noun

  1. informal.
    a pompous or formal person
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of stuffed shirt1

An Americanism dating back to 1910–15
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Idioms and Phrases

An overly formal or pompous person, as in She's such a stuffed shirt that I'm surprised you'd invite her to a barbecue . This expression alludes to a shirt filled with paper (instead of a real person). [c. 1900]
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Example Sentences

He had been herded into a corner by Johnson, Aunt Gretchen's stuffed shirt of a butler, who was standing guard over him.

Nayland is a stuffed shirt of the first stuffing, and a tinpot Hitler to boot, but he is fanatically and incorruptibly patriotic.

I'm tired of all that other crowd—the stuffed shirt brigade, you know.

He characterized Frank Shabata by a Bohemian expression which is the equivalent of stuffed shirt.

He turned to the crowd, which looked on in stunned silence, and tucked in his money-stuffed shirt.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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