stiff as a board
Also, stiff as a poker. Inflexible, rigidly formal, unbending, as in This cloth is stiff as a board; what happened to it? or There he stood, stiff as a poker, unwilling to give an inch. The board in the first simile for rigidity is a slab of wood; the second, alluding to the iron implement used to push around logs in open fires, dates from the late 1700s.
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Words nearby stiff as a board
stiction, Stiegel, Stieglitz, stiff, stiff-arm, stiff as a board, stiffen, stiffener, stiff-man syndrome, stiff-necked, stiff upper lip
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
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