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Synonyms

stiff as a board

Idioms  

  1. Also, stiff as a poker. Inflexible, rigidly formal, unbending, as in This cloth is stiff as a board; what happened to it? or There he stood, stiff as a poker, unwilling to give an inch. The board in the first simile for rigidity is a slab of wood; the second, alluding to the iron implement used to push around logs in open fires, dates from the late 1700s.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He just stood there, stiff as a board, with his head down, and his legs spraddled out.

From Literature

I was still sitting there like a marble statue of Distressa, Patron Saint of Dread and Dumbfoundedness: mouth and eyes wide open, arms and legs sticking out, and everything as stiff as a board.

From Literature

Another stands stiff as a board on the bottom step of a cabin.

From Literature

Unmoving and stiff as a board, she appeared to be deceased.

From Science Magazine

At first, Berry couldn’t run: He lay on the floor, rigid, face not moving, “as stiff as a board,” his tour manager recalled.

From Washington Post

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.