stiff-lipped

stiff-lipped

English

WOTD – 13 July 2020

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˌstɪf ˈlɪpt/

• Audio (RP)

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• Audio (GA)

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• Rhymes: -ɪpt

Adjective

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

1. Maintaining a stiff upper lip.
   • 1879 July, John Augustus O’Shea, “Accidents of War”, in Tinsleys’ Magazine. An Illustrated Monthly, volume XXV, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], OCLC 793924893, page 34, column 2:

     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.

   • 1892 May, “My Matinée”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XVIII, number 107 (New Series), London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], OCLC 561748243, page 508:

     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.

   • 1902 July, Alfred Ollivant, “Danny”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VII, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Ridgway Company, OCLC 270613654, book 2, chapter 1 (The Apostate), page 43, column 2:

     Stiff-lipped, stiff-haired, the father gave his orders to the man in red.

   • 1999, Susan Wiggs, chapter 13, in Husband for Hire (Heart of the West), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises, →ISBN, page 170:

     Twyla watched it all with the stiff-lipped shock he recalled seeing on patients when he had done his emergency medicine rotation. "Don't tell me," Rob said to her. "Let me guess. Your ex-husband."

   • 2012, Michelle Chen, “What Labor Looks Like: From Wisconsin to Cairo, Youth Hold a Mirror to History of Workers’ Struggles”, in Daniel Katz and Richard A. Greenwald, editors, Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America, New York, N.Y.: The New Press, →ISBN, part 1 (Community and Coalitions), page 55:

     Radical youth, who later became educated liberals, saw in the old-school factory workers of his father's generation an image of stiff-lipped industrial union men as "the principal perpetrators of racism, sexism and narrow-mindedness in American society. [...]"

   • 2018 December 12, Charles Bramesco, “A Spoonful of Nostalgia Helps the Calculated Mary Poppins Returns Go Down”, in The A.V. Club‎, archived from the original on 24 May 2019:

     [T]he zippy musical numbers in which Mary Poppins (a stiff-lipped Emily Blunt) whisks cherubs Annabel, John, and Georgie (Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, and Joel Dawson, respectively) away into colorful hyperreal fantasias impress.

Translations

maintaining a stiff upper lip

Further reading

• “stiff-lipped, adj.” under “stiff, adj., n., and adv.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1916.