stuffed shirt

See also: stuffed-shirt

English

WOTD – 6 November 2010

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

stuffed shirt (plural stuffed shirts)

(idiomatic, informal) One who is pompous or self-important, especially one who is officious in a position of authority.
- 1914, Samuel Hopkins Adams, chapter 30, in The Clarion‎:
  "Don't you come the high-and-holy on me. You and your smooth, big, phony stuffed-shirt of a father."
- 1941, Herman J. Mankiewicz; Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, RKO Radio Pictures, spoken by Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten):
  Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced hypocrite? Am I a New England school marm?
- 1944, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, OCLC 53054407, page 208:
  “Oh? I remember, you came to Chicago once. Bit of a stuffed shirt, aren't you?”
- 1952 May 26, “Medicine: Mind Matters”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 2012-12-01:
  Dr. Laughlin was the only one in a movie party who detested the second male lead—"I regarded him as overserious, pedantic, a stuffed shirt."
(usually hyphenated) Used attributively.
- 2000 July 10, Frederik Balfour, “Return of a Hong Kong Highflier”, in BusinessWeek‎:
  The opportunistic style that was the bank's trademark still prevails and continues to attract talented young Hong Kongers looking for an alternative to the stuffed-shirt culture of most U.S. and European banks.

one who is overly-officious