Word.ws English Dictionary

rigor

UK/ˈɹɪɡə//ˈɹɪɡɚ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

rigor is the US spelling of rigour.

rigor is the ellipsis of rigor mortis.

Meaning of rigour

Noun

rigour (countable and uncountable, plural rigours)

  1. Severity or strictness.
    • And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 1:13–14
  2. Harshness, as of climate.
  3. A feeling of cold with shivering accompanied by a rise in body temperature.
  4. Character of being unyielding or inflexible.
  5. Shrewd questioning.
  6. Higher level of difficulty.

Meaning of rigor mortis

Noun

rigor mortis (usually uncountable, plural rigor mortises)

  1. (usually) Temporary stiffness of the body's muscles and joints following death.
    • Such are the principal phenomena observed during that form of contraction which I conceive to be analogous to the rigor mortis...1840, Royal Society of London, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, page 491

See all 2 meanings of rigor mortis

Proper noun capitalized: Rigor

Rigor (plural Rigors)

  1. A surname from Spanish.

Forms of rigor

Noun
pluralrigors
Proper noun
pluralRigors

Origin of rigor

From Old French, from Latin rigor (“stiffness, rigidity, rigor, cold, harshness”), from rigere (“to be rigid”).

Borrowed from Spanish Rigor; this surname is predominantly found in the Philippines.

Words formed from rigor

Phrases with rigor

Words that rhyme with rigor

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rigor

What does rigor mean?
Rigor means a surname from Spanish.
What is rigor the US spelling of?
Rigor is the US spelling of rigour.
What part of speech is rigor?
Rigor is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce rigor?
Rigor is pronounced /ˈɹɪɡə/ (UK).

Words near rigor in the dictionary

  1. rigolette
  2. rigolettes
  3. rigoll
  4. rigolls
  5. rigols
  6. rigor
  7. rigor caloris
  8. rigor mortis
  9. rigor mortised
  10. rigor mortises
  11. rigor mortising

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rigor (page history and authors); Rigor (page history and authors); rigour (page history and authors); rigor mortis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-rigor.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-rigor.wav.

Cite this entry: “rigor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rigor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.