stuffy
nounEtymology From stuff + -y.
1
Canada, US, Childish, Colloquial, Often Synonym of stuffed toy.
stuffy
adj/ˈstʌfi/
Etymology From stuff + -y.
1
Poorly 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.
2
Uncomfortably warm without sufficient air circulation.
- Abby Jimenez Like my life was a stuffy room, and you’re the breeze that came in when the window opened.
- If Euston is not typically English, St. Pancras is. Its façade is a nightmare of improbable Gothic. It is fairly plastered with the aesthetic ideals of 1868, and the only beautiful thing about it is Barlow's roof. It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost. Yet there is something about the ordered whole of St. Pancras that would make demolition a terrible pity.1941 August 23, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358:
1 more example
- 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, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2020:
3
Stout; mettlesome; resolute.
4
US Angry and obstinate; sulky.
5
Boring, old-fashioned, uninteresting, over-formal, pompous, very conventional.
- The stuffy professor droned on as the class lost interest.
- It could be argued that the rise of the socially conscious model reflects a very 2017 archetype: the “woke” young woman, who looks set to define femininity this decade in the same way that the lager-swilling ladette did in the 90s. 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:
6
Scotland Stout; sturdy.
- Derived terms
- stodgy, stuffily, stuffiness, unstuffy
- Related terms
- stuffed shirt