stiff

adjective

1. Drunk: when the regular piano player got stiff and fell from the stool (1737+)
2. Forged; phony: ''I put over a couple of stiff ones'' is the way a paper-hanger describes an operation (1940s+ Underworld)

noun

1. A drunken person: Robbing a drunken man they call ''rolling a stiff'' (1907+)
2. (also stiffie) A corpse: a final chapter narrated by the stiff/ So we scope out the stiffie and everybody says you know, like it was too bad (1859+)
3. A hobo; tramp; vagabond: He bore none of the earmarks of the professional ''stiff '' (1900+)
4. A migratory worker; okie (1899+)
5. A working man or woman; a nonclerical and nonprofessional employee; working stiff: Coolidge always seemed unreal to the ordinary stiff (1930+)
6. A clandestine letter, esp one passed around among prisoners (1889+ Underworld)
7. A forged check, banknote, etc (1823+ Underworld)
8. A team, fighter, contestant, etc, that is bound to lose; esp, a race horse that will not, cannot, or is not permitted to win: There is also a rumor that Follow You is a stiff in the race (1890+)
9. Any failure; flop, turkey: gets a million dollars worth of hype, and I hear it's a stiff (1960s+)
10. A person who ''stiffs'' a waiter: The maitre d', knowing a stiff when he saw one, shrugged

verb

1. To cause a horse to lose a race: He admitted that he himself had stiffed horses for a fee (1940s+ Horse racing)
2. To fail to tip a waiter or other employee: But he was slow about getting our orders, so we stiffed him/ who not only stiffs waiters and cab drivers, but golf caddies as well (1939+)
3. To cheat, esp out of money, fair wages, etc: The company defends its plan as a business decision and denies it was trying to stiff the women/ which creditors he could stiff, which he could stall, which had to be paid at once (1950+)
4. To swindle; defraud; scam: Some of the lessons were not as palatable, though, such as the one about a young woman who stiffed him/ In other words, New York City got stiffed (1950+)
5. To kill; off: Nobody was supposed to stiff a member of the family the way Vinnie had stiffed his niece's boy (1974+)
6. (also stiff-arm) To treat unfairly and harshly; rebuff or push aside brutally: He had stiffed a Philadelphia charity golf tournament without explanation/ didn't want to stiff him or send him sniffing along false trails/ I'll just stiff-arm them (1973+)

Related Terms

big stiff, bindlestiff, bored stiff, knock someone out, scared stiff

[the underworld senses having to do with forged and clandestine papers, cheating, etc, are derived fr an early 1800s British sense, ''paper, a document,'' probably based on the stiffness of official documents and document paper; the senses having to do with failure, etc, are related to the stiffness of a corpse; the sense of harsh snubbing, etc, is fr the stiff-arm in football, where a player, usually a runner, straightens out his arm and pushes it directly into the face or body of an intending tackler]