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View synonyms for

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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yvlog 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

Examples have not been reviewed.

The term "stuffed shirt" was invented for a character such as McCarthy, who resigned his office after being ousted as speaker of the House earlier this year.

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There’s another son, Michael, played by Jake Davies; he’s a stuffed shirt who’s embarrassed by his father until — just watch the movie.

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In the 2020 documentary “When Seattle Invented the Future,” fair special events coordinator Louis Larsen remembers the prince as “a stuffed shirt,” who said, “What am I, a trained seal?”

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Both Baker and Cameron capture this optimistic atmosphere in the early scenes of their films: Irish jigs below deck and fine dining with the stuffed shirts above.

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That Rogers was able to persuade the burghers of Paris and the stuffed shirts of Lloyd's to commission such extraordinary structures says much for his powers of persuasion.

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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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