stuck-up
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of stuck-up
First recorded in 1820–30
Explanation
If you have an exaggerated opinion of yourself, believing you're smarter, more attractive, or just generally better than everyone else, you're stuck-up. If you talk about nothing but the awards you've won, and your friends might think you're stuck-up. You can also describe a stuck-up person as arrogant, snobby, or conceited. The adjective stuck-up is informal, but it's a great way to talk about someone who brags about himself and looks down on just about everyone else. Some experts guess that stuck-up comes from the idea of "having one's nose up in the air." We do know that it first appeared in print around 1830.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Updike stuck up for himself when faced with the magazine’s intrusively correct fiddling: In 1958 he sent one editor, William Maxwell, an unwavering paragraph against a single word.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 10, 2025
"We're stuck up here. I don't see any flames but I know they're close by."
From BBC • Jan. 7, 2025
As she waited at Sunset Beach, her husband was still stuck up the hill.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 7, 2025
But Danny's creator stuck up for his boy: Absolutely not, Winslow told me, Danny would have spotted that "punk" miles away.
From Salon • Apr. 6, 2024
I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will, would never stir beyond the park paling.’
From "Emma" by Jane Austen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
