Adjacent Words

stilted definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: artificially formal; "that artificial humility that her husband hated"; "contrived coyness"; "a stilted letter of acknowledgment"; "when people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation" [syn: artificial, contrived, hokey, stilted]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1820 1. a. pompous, lofty b. formal, stiff 2. having the curve beginning at some distance above the impost <a stilted arch> • stiltedly adverb • stiltedness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 (of a literary style etc.) stiff and unnatural; bombastic. 2 standing on stilts. 3 Archit. (of an arch) with pieces of upright masonry between the imposts and the springers. Derivatives: stiltedly adv. stiltedness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Stilt Stilt, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stilted; p. pr. & vb. n. Stilting.] To raise on stilts, or as if on stilts.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Stilted Stilt"ed, a. Elevated as if on stilts; hence, pompous; bombastic; as, a stilted style; stilted declamation.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If someone speaks in a stilted way, they speak in a formal or unnatural way, for example because they are not relaxed. We made polite, stilted conversation... = laboured ? easy ADJ

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Pompous, swelling, inflated, bombastic, turgid, pretentious, grandiloquent, high-flowing, high-sounding, fustian, stilty, tumid, highflown, grandiose.

Moby Thesaurus

Gongoresque, Johnsonian, Latinate, affected, artificial, aureate, awkward, bedizened, big-sounding, bloated, bombastic, buckram, cardboard, clumsy, conventional, convoluted, cramped, cumbrous, declamatory, decorous, elephantine, elevated, erect, euphuistic, exalted, flamboyant, flaming, flashy, flatulent, flaunting, flowery, forced, formal, fulsome, garish, gassy, gaudy, graceless, grandiloquent, grandiose, grandisonant, guinde, halting, heavy, high, high-flowing, high-flown, high-flying, high-sounding, highfalutin, in buckram, inflated, inkhorn, la-di-da, labored, labyrinthine, leaden, lexiphanic, lifted, lofty, lumbering, lurid, magniloquent, mannered, meretricious, mincing, muscle-bound, on stilts, orotund, ostentatious, overblown, overdone, overelaborate, overinvolved, overwrought, pedantic, pompous, ponderous, pontifical, pretentious, prim, raised, rampant, rhetorical, rigid, self-important, sensational, sensationalistic, sententious, sesquipedalian, showy, solemn, sonorous, starch, starched, stiff, stuffy, sublime, swollen, tall, too-too, tortuous, tumid, turgid, ungraceful, unnatural, unwieldy, upcast, upflung, uplifted, upraised, upreared, upright, upthrown, wooden