King James Bible Dictionary

STIFF, adjective [Gr.]

1. Not easily bent; not flexible or pliant; not flaccid; rigid; applicable to any substance; as stiff wood; stiff paper; cloth stiff with starch; a limb stiff with frost.

They, rising on stiff pinions, tower the mid aerial sky.

2. Not liquid or fluid; thick and tenacious; inspissated; not soft nor hard. Thus melted metals grow stiff as they cool; they are stiff before they are hard. The paste is too stiff or not stiff enough.

3. Strong; violent; impetuous in motion; as in seamens language, a stiff gale or breeze.

4. Hardy; stubborn; not easily subdued.

How stiff is my vile sense!

5. Obstinate; pertinacious; firm in perseverance or resistance.

It is a shame to stand stiff in a foolish argument.

A war ensues; the Cretans own their cause, stiff to defend their hospitable laws.

6. Harsh; formal; constrained; not natural and easy; as a stiff formal style.

7. Formal in manner; constrained; affected; starched; not easy or natural; as stiff behavior.

The French are open, familiar and talkative; the Italians stiff ceremonious and reserved.

8. Strongly maintained, or asserted with good evidence.

This is stiff news.

9. In seamens language, a stiff vessel is one that will bear sufficient sail without danger of oversetting.

STIFFEN, verb transitive

1. To make stiff; to make less pliant or flexible; as, to stiffen cloth with starch.

He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning to the Lord God of Israel. 2 Chronicles 36:13.

STIFFEN the sinews; summon up the blood.

2. To make torpid; as stiffening grief.

3. To inspissate; to make more thick or viscous; as, to stiffen paste.

STIFFEN, verb intransitive

1. To become stiff; to become more rigid or less flexible.

--Like bristles rose my stiffning hair.

2. To become more thick, or less soft; to be inspissated; to approach to hardness; as, melted substances stiffen as they cool.

The tender soil then stiffning by degrees--

3. To become less susceptible of impression; to become less susceptible of impression; to become less tender or yielding; to grow more obstinate.

Some souls, we see, grow hard and stiffen with adversity.

STIFFENING, participle present tense Making or becoming less pliable, or more thick, or more obstinate.

STIFFENING, noun Something that is used to make a substance more stiff or less soft.

STIFF-HEARTED, adjective [stiff and heart.] Obstinate; stubborn; contumacious.

They are impudent children and stiff-hearted Ezekiel 2:1.

STIFFLY, adverb

1. Firmly; strongly; as the boughs of a tree stiffly upheld.

2. Rigidly; obstinately; with stubbornness. The doctrine of the infallibility of the church of Rome is stiffly maintained by its adherents.

See Impenitence; Obduracy
Impenitence; Obduracy

STIFF-NECKED, adjective [stiff and neck.] Stubborn; inflexibly obstinate; contumacious; as a stiff-necked people; stiff-necked pride.

STIFFNESS, noun

1. Rigidness; want of pliableness or flexibility; the firm texture or state of a substance which renders it difficult to bend it; as the stiffness or iron or wood; the stiffness of a frozen limb.

2. Thickness; spissitude; a state between softness and hardness; as the stiffness of sirup, paste, size or starch.

3. Torpidness; inaptitude to motion.

An icy stiffness benumbs my blood.

4. Tension; as the stiffness of a cord.

5. Obstinacy; stubbornness; contumaciousness.

The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too.

STIFFNESS of mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

6. Formality of manner; constraint; affected precision.

All this religion sat easily upon him, without stiffness and constraint.

7. Rigorousness; harshness.

But speak no word to her of these sad plights, which her too constant stiffness doth constrain.

8. Affected or constrained manner of expression or writing; want of natural simplicity and ease; as stiffness of style.