Word.ws English Dictionary

stiff-upper-lippy

stiff-upper-lippy adjective: having, resembling, or characteristic of a stiff upper lip; stoic.

Adjective

stiff-upper-lippy (comparative more stiff-upper-lippy, superlative most stiff-upper-lippy)

  1. (informal, uncommon) Having, resembling, or characteristic of a stiff upper lip; stoic.
    • I’m trying to be stiff-upper-lippy.2001 October 2, Marti Noxon, “Bargaining”, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, episode 1, spoken by Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), Los Angeles, Calif.: UPN
    • “Keep calm and carry on,” a British government propaganda poster created in 1939, is now decorating offices. […] “It looks quiet and nice and sort of stiff-upper-lippy,” Mr. [David] Lubars said.2009 November 22, Stephanie Clifford, “Calming Sign of Troubled Past Appears in Modern Offices”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the...

Forms of stiff-upper-lippy

comparativemore stiff-upper-lippy
superlativemost stiff-upper-lippy
alternative formstiff upper lippy

Origin of stiff-upper-lippy

From stiff upper lip + -y.

Questions about stiff-upper-lippy

What does stiff-upper-lippy mean?
Stiff-upper-lippy means having, resembling, or characteristic of a stiff upper lip; stoic.
What part of speech is stiff-upper-lippy?
Stiff-upper-lippy is an adjective.

Words near stiff-upper-lippy in the dictionary

  1. stiff-person syndrome
  2. stiff-tailed duck
  3. stiff-tailed ducks
  4. stiff-upper-lipped
  5. stiff-upper-lippery
  6. stiff-upper-lippy
  7. stiffe
  8. stiffed
  9. stiffed up
  10. stiffen
  11. stiffen up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stiff-upper-lippy (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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