Word.ws English Dictionary

unstiffen

unstiffen verb: to remove the stiffness from; to relax; to make pliant.

Verb

unstiffen (third-person singular simple present unstiffens, present participle unstiffening, simple past and past participle unstiffened)

  1. To remove the stiffness from; to relax; to make pliant.
    • We stopped here about ten o'clock this morning, and I was so tired and stiff after the long night wedged in tight in the railway carriage that I got out to get some air and unstiffen myself, instinctively clutching my fiddle-case; and a Bavarian officer on the platform, watching the train with some...1917, Alice Cholmondeley, Christine

Forms of unstiffen

third-person singular presentunstiffens
present participleunstiffening
past participleunstiffened
pastunstiffened

Origin of unstiffen

From un- + stiffen.

Questions about unstiffen

What does unstiffen mean?
Unstiffen means to remove the stiffness from; to relax; to make pliant.
What part of speech is unstiffen?
Unstiffen is a verb.
What is the past tense of unstiffen?
The past tense of unstiffen is unstiffened.

Words near unstiffen in the dictionary

  1. unsticking
  2. unsticks
  3. unsticky
  4. unstickying
  5. unstiff
  6. unstiffen
  7. unstiffened
  8. unstiffening
  9. unstiffens
  10. unstifled
  11. unstifling

Source and license

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