Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use stuffy in a sentence

31 example sentences · adjective, noun

Stuffy means poorly ventilated; partially plugged. Example: “I can’t smell very well today – I have a stuffy nose.”

Examples of stuffy by meaning

adjectivePoorly ventilated; partially plugged.

  • I can’t smell very well today – I have a stuffy nose.
  • Let’s go outside – it’s getting stuffy in here.

adjectiveUncomfortably warm without sufficient air circulation.

  • It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost.1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358
  • We all sat in stuffy classrooms and had men in tweedy sportscoats ruin our afternoons.1988 May 6, Michael Miner, “"Chicago Times" Reaches for the Cutting Edge; Nicole Drieske Goes Public; Harry Golden”, in Chicago Reader...

adjectiveBoring, old-fashioned, uninteresting, over-formal, pompous, very conventional.

  • The stuffy professor droned on as the class lost interest.
  • It is also symptomatic of a broader cultural “awokening” that has reached the stuffiest institutions; even the royal family has recently relaxed its upper lip.2017 May 15, Hannah Marriott, “Woke models: how activism became fashion's latest must-have”, in The Guardian, London, page 9

More sentences with stuffy

  • It's getting quite stuffy in this room: let's open the windows and air it.From the entry air
  • Herbal tea has a nice aroma and is good for a stuffy head.From the entry herbal
  • Is it me or is it really stuffy in here?From the entry is it me
  • (Any kind of traditional or folk music.): Popular and classical music are so stuffy, I prefer listening to the rootsy sounds of ethnic music.From the entry ethnic music
  • Elizabeth is too stuffy, Beth is too soft, so Liz it is."2010, R. G. Alexander, Midnight Falls, Samhain Publishing,, →ISBN, page 67. From the entry Liz
  • When cold symptoms are above your neck (like a stuffy, drippy nose), it’s okay to exercise lightly.2006, Pruitt, Andrew L., Andy Pruitt's complete medical guide for cyclists, page 139. From the entry above-the-neck rule
  • Pan loafy people can also be very stuffy and toffee nosed and hence arrogant.1993, K Stephen, “Proud to be British?”, in soc.culture.british (Usenet). From the entry pan-loafy
  • Noisy, stuffy men smelling of tobacco smoke, their minds obstipated by clogged presumptions !1926, Maxwell Struthers Burt, The Interpreter's House, page 136. From the entry obstipate
  • Very nice in the dimpsey light, but stuffy in the daytime.1915, Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie, “An Off-Shore Wind”, in A Tall Ship. From the entry dimpsey
  • It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be allowed out in the evenings.1904, E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet. From the entry homer
  • The trolls did not match the old professional racists’ stuffy style, but they found use in their pseudoscientific graphics.2022 May 20, Elle Reeve, “How White ‘replacement theory’ evolved from elderly racists to teens online to the alleged inspiration for…. From the entry pseudoscientific
  • It was a small, stuffy, defunct room, of mahogany, and deathly enlargements of photographs of departed people done in carbon.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 10”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC. From the entry carbon print
  • Some followers even tweet back in aliebn-speak: a spirit of friendly linguistic play that's more like a familect than a stuffy Oxford Common Room.2019, Gretchen McCulloch, “Language and Society”, in Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, Penguin, →ISBN, page 60. From the entry familect
  • Wanting to get out of the house, he descended toward the large living room with its chintzy curtains and stuffy lamps and pictures.2003, Frank Corsaro, “Part Seven”, in Kunma, New York, N.Y.: Forge, →ISBN. From the entry chintzy
  • There I am, living my life in a stuffy subway; I hear the Beatles, the door opens, and I’m at the ocean.1968 December 15, Michael Lydon, quoting Bill Graham, “The Producer of the New Rock”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York…. From the entry teenie bopper
  • The church was becoming stuffy, and it occurred to me that Reverend Sykes intended to sweat the amount due out of his flock.1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC. From the entry sweat out
  • More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. I. From the entry England
  • The summer term had been busy and stuffy, and to a Rugby player there were few attractions in punts among lilied backwaters.1935, John Buchan, The House of the Four Winds, Prologue. From the entry lilied
  • Preferable is the cosey English walled villa of the middle class, even though it be a bit stuffy and suggestive of earwigs.1906, Mabel Osgood Wright, The Garden, You, and I. From the entry cosey
  • After earlier years when the family had been accused of being stuffy and hidebound, members now started behaving as though they were in a never-ending soap opera.2022 September 8, Stephen Bates, “Queen Elizabeth II obituary”, in The Guardian. From the entry hidebound
  • Philip, who was made Duke of Edinburgh on the couple’s wedding, introduced a new, less stuffy, though as the years went on occasionally astringent, tone to the royal family.September 8 2022, Stephen Bates, “Queen Elizabeth II obituary”, in The Guardian. From the entry astringent
  • There's a world of difference between the name Edward, which sounds rather regal and stuffy (Edwardian) and the name Eddie, which sounds like a guy on the bus.1994, Caroline Knapp, The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, Counterpoint Press, published 2004, →ISBN, page 169. From the entry Edward
  • The husband is a mildly stuffy blueblood who somewhat nettles his high-style-model wife, but she is a brisk, free-wheeling creature who is a bit of a nettler herself.1968, Filmfacts - Volume 11, page 347. From the entry nettler
  • Alas, it rained and rained quietly and wettingly all Saturday and Sunday, and I was cooped up with Clive, Duncan and Barbara in a very stuffy room.1962 May 7, Frances Partridge, Hanging On: Diaries December 1960 – August 1963, London: Phoenix Giant, published 1998, →ISBN, page 108. From the entry wettingly
  • The ex-oil economist can do it all because he has the gift of the gab and used to be a leftwing tearaway, expelled from the SNP ranks in stuffier times.2014 September 8, Michael White, “Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe”, in The Guardian. From the entry gift of the gab

Meaning of stuffy

  1. adjective Poorly ventilated; partially plugged.
  2. adjective Uncomfortably warm without sufficient air circulation.
  3. adjective Stout; mettlesome; resolute.

Full definition of stuffy

Questions about stuffy in a sentence

How do you use stuffy in a sentence?
Stuffy is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “I can’t smell very well today – I have a stuffy nose.”
What is a short sentence with stuffy?
“It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost.”
What does stuffy mean?
Stuffy means poorly ventilated; partially plugged.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stuffy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use stuffy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/stuffy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.