A stuffed shirt is someone who is inflexible, conservative, or has an unwarranted opinion of self-importance. The term may have originated from stuffing shirts with hay or newspaper for display purposes, implying a void or fake person. It is an insult implying unimportance or inflexibility.
A stuffed shirt refers to someone who is inflexible, a fuddy-duddy, or consumed with an unwarranted opinion of great self-importance. The idiom can also mean that someone is conservative. The idiom entered the English language fairly recently, with some explanations for its origins. The padded shirt bears some resemblance to the empty suit, a person whose importance is greatly exaggerated. Both imply some kind of quality that is useless to someone and a person that will probably bore you.
There are two explanations for the origins of the term. The first is that anyone making a scarecrow clearly had to stuff their shirt with hay, newspaper, or old clothes to better portray a person. The scarecrow is clearly an empty and false person. It may be swollen with hay, but it’s really nothing. The scarecrow doesn’t scare most humans, and even crows might not be impressed with this variation of the stuffed shirt.
In the 19th century, many shirts for both men and women were elaborately starched affairs. Traders might want to display shirts in shop windows and mannequins were not common. Retailers used newspaper or hay to stuff starched shirts, sometimes called shirts, so that a prospective buyer could get an idea of what the shirt would look like when worn. This is the second possible explanation of how the term padded shirt came about. Again, it implies a void or fake instead of a “real” person.
Starching the shirts or making a quilted shirt often made the garment appear rather inflexible. Even a starched shirt hung on a hanger retains some of its shape. Even the starched or padded shirt gives the illusion of being filled with something, when in reality it is filled only with air or useless material.
Calling someone a padded shirt is an insult. Either you’re insinuating that they’re really very unimportant, or that they’re very inflexible. For example, an adult who is constantly correcting the ways of others might be called by this name. Alternatively, a stuffed shirt could be someone who isn’t willing to bend over on any trivial matter. He or she feels that his or her way of doing things is the one and only correct way, and will be quick to point out or be rude to others who may be living their lives by different standards.
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