Stuffy Meaning
/ˈstʌfi/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjPoorly ventilated; partially plugged.
adjUncomfortably warm without sufficient air circulation.
Sentence Examples
This room is very stuffy.
It's very stuffy in here.
Will you open the window and air out this stuffy room?
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
The meeting room was so ____ that many people felt sleepy and uncomfortable.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It felt very ____ in the crowded meeting room, and everyone was relieved when someone finally opened a window.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree English stuff Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English stuffy From stuff + -y.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Abby Jimenez
Like my life was a stuffy room, and you’re the breeze that came in when the window opened."
—
"If Euston is not typically English, St. Pancras is. Its façade is a nightmare of improbable Gothic. It is fairly plastered with the aesthetic ideals of 1868, and the only beautiful thing about it is Barlow's roof. It is haunted by the stuffier kind of ghost. Yet there is something about the ordered whole of St. Pancras that would make demolition a terrible pity."
— 1941 August 26, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 358:
"We all sat in stuffy classrooms and had men in tweedy sportscoats ruin our afternoons."
— 1988 May 6, Michael Miner, “"Chicago Times" Reaches for the Cutting Edge; Nicole Drieske Goes Public; Harry Golden”, in Chicago Reader, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2020:
"It could be argued that the rise of the socially conscious model reflects a very 2017 archetype: the “woke” young woman, who looks set to define femininity this decade in the same way that the lager-swilling ladette did in the 90s. It is also symptomatic of a broader cultural “awokening” that has reached the stuffiest institutions; even the royal family has recently relaxed its upper lip."
— 2017 May 15, Hannah Marriott, “Woke models: how activism became fashion's latest must-have”, in The Guardian, London, page 9:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The meeting room was so ____ that many people felt sleepy and uncomfortable.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It felt very ____ in the crowded meeting room, and everyone was relieved when someone finally opened a window.