Etymology

stiff

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Today it means: Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible. Full definition →

Middle English stif ← Old English stīf ← Proto-West Germanic *stīf
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stiff · adjective, noun, verb, adverb1

  1. Proto-Indo-European*steyp
  2. Proto-Germanic*stīfaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic*stīf
  4. Old Englishstīf
  5. Middle Englishstif
  6. English todaystiff

From Middle English stiff, stiffe, stif, from Old English stīf, from Proto-West Germanic *stīf, from Proto-Germanic *stīfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *steypós. See also West Frisian stiif, Dutch stijf, Norwegian Bokmål stiv, German steif; also Latin stīpes, stīpō, from which English stevedore. The expected Modern English form would be /staɪf/; /stɪf/ is probably originally from compounds such as stiffly, where the vowel was shortened before a consonant cluster.

Stiff · proper noun2

English surname, from the adjective stiff.

Words from the same roots

Proto-Indo-European*steypós all →

stevedore

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.