Word.ws English Dictionary

stiff-lipped

/ˌstɪf ˈlɪpt/

stiff-lipped adjective: maintaining a stiff upper lip.

Adjective

stiff-lipped (comparative more stiff-lipped, superlative most stiff-lipped)

  1. Maintaining a stiff upper lip.
    • There is no accessible public roll of the knights of the order. [...] At this moment any stiff-lipped impostor may enter the jeweller's shop at the corner of Essex-street and the Strand, furnish himself with an imitation cross, and parade his counterfeit hero-certificate with impunity.1879 July, John Augustus O’Shea, “Accidents of War”, in Tinsleys’ Magazine. An Illustrated Monthly, volume XXV, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 34, column 2
    • Again, in art, who holds the scales of notice for the Academy and the Grosvenor, and such like exhibitions? [...] a stiff-lipped, white-faced man, no longer young, whose creed is that no good pictures were painted in the English school before 1880.1892 May, “My Matinée”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XVIII, number 107 (New Series), London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 508

Examples of stiff-lipped in a sentence

  • Stiff-lipped, stiff-haired, the father gave his orders to the man in red.1902 July, Alfred Ollivant, “Danny”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VII, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Ridgway Company, →OCLC, book 2, chapter...
  • Twyla watched it all with the stiff-lipped shock he recalled seeing on patients when he had done his emergency medicine rotation.1999, Susan Wiggs, chapter 13, in Husband for Hire (Heart of the West), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises, →ISBN, page 170:

Forms of stiff-lipped

comparativemore stiff-lipped
superlativemost stiff-lipped

Origin of stiff-lipped

The term refers to a person having a stern expression with the mouth closed and the lips pressed together.

Words that rhyme with stiff-lipped

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stiff-lipped

What does stiff-lipped mean?
Stiff-lipped means maintaining a stiff upper lip.
How do you use stiff-lipped in a sentence?
Stiff-lipped, stiff-haired, the father gave his orders to the man in red.
What part of speech is stiff-lipped?
Stiff-lipped is an adjective.
How do you pronounce stiff-lipped?
Stiff-lipped is pronounced /ˌstɪf ˈlɪpt/ (UK).

Words near stiff-lipped in the dictionary

  1. stiff-arming
  2. stiff-arms
  3. stiff-backed
  4. stiff-hearted
  5. stiff-leaf goldenrod
  6. stiff-lipped
  7. stiff-necked
  8. stiff-neckedly
  9. stiff-neckedness
  10. stiff-person syndrome
  11. stiff-tailed duck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stiff-lipped (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stiff-lipped.wav, En-us-stiff-lipped.mp3.

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