Dictionary

stiff-lipped en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• (General-American) audio
• /ˌstɪf ˈlɪpt/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. Maintaining a stiff upper lip.
   • 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. 1892 May, “My Matinée”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XVIII, number 107 (New Series), London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 508:
   • Stiff-lipped, stiff-haired, the father gave his orders to the man in red. 1902 July, Alfred Ollivant, “Danny”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VII, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Ridgway Company, →OCLC, book 2, chapter 1 (The Apostate), page 43, column 2:
   • [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. 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:
   • 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. [...]" 2012, Michelle Chen, “What Labor Looks Like: From Wisconsin to Cairo, Youth Hold a Mirror to History of Workers’ Struggles”, in Daniel Katz, 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:
   • 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." 1999, Susan Wiggs, chapter 13, in Husband for Hire (Heart of the West), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises, →ISBN, page 170:
   • 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. 1879 July, John Augustus O’Shea, “Accidents of War”, in Tinsleys’ Magazine. An Illustrated Monthly, volume XXV, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 34, column 2:

Forms