Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or state of being rigid.
  • noun An instance of being rigid.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being rigid; stiffness; inflexibility; absence of pliancy; specifically, in mech., resistance to change of form.
  • noun Strictness; severity; harshness: as, rigidity of principles or of censure.
  • noun Synonyms Inflexibility. See austere, rigor.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being rigid; want of pliability; the quality of resisting change of form; the amount of resistance with which a body opposes change of form; -- opposed to flexibility, ductility, malleability, and softness.
  • noun Stiffness of appearance or manner; want of ease or elegance.
  • noun Obs. orR. Severity; rigor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The quality or state of being rigid; want of pliability; the quality of resisting change of form; the amount of resistance with which a body opposes change of form.
  • noun Stiffness of appearance or manner; want of ease or elegance.
  • noun In Economics: synonym for stickiness (of prices/wages etc.). Describing the tendency of prices and money wages to adjust to changes in the economy with a certain delay.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the physical property of being stiff and resisting bending
  • noun the quality of being rigid and rigorously severe

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Unions leaders denounced what they described as rigidity from their negotiating counterparts; government and management urged the unions to take into consideration the gravity of the situation of a company that had been losing some 2 million euros ($3 million) a day.

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2008

  • Unions leaders denounced what they described as rigidity from their negotiating counterparts; government and management urged the unions to take into consideration the gravity of the situation of a company that had been losing some 2 million euros ($3 million) a day.

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2008

  • Unions leaders denounced what they described as rigidity from their negotiating counterparts; government and management urged the unions to take into consideration the gravity of the situation of a company that had been losing some 2 million euros ($3 million) a day.

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2008

  • Unions leaders denounced what they described as rigidity from their negotiating counterparts; government and management urged the unions to take into consideration the gravity of the situation of a company that had been losing some 2 million euros ($3 million) a day.

    Kansas City Star: Front Page 2008

  • But with such a supple, sensitive and compassionate mind, rigidity is something you need never worry about.

    Life Begins At 40 « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • Moreover, in the U.S. today, I think that a case can be made that wage rigidity is a major factor in the current business cycle.

    Hayek and Tobin, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • That unique combination of flashiness and rigidity is at the artificial heart of one larger-than-life movie that explodes right off the screen this weekend in theaters.

    “Speed Racer” is one for the record books » Scene-Stealers 2008

  • There is a certain rigidity and politicization about the issue of child support, custody, and visitation that ignores the plight of fathers.

    Guilty pleasures. « A Bird’s Nest 2007

  • Even now a certain German rigidity in Heisenberg can make Weisskopf bristle (he is himself Austrian), but he grants the main thing ” whatever ordinary human failings of which Heisenberg may have been guilty, he ran a bomb program for the Germans which could hardly have been better designed by the Allies themselves.

    The Nazis and the Atom Bomb: An Exchange Ambrose, Lee 1991

  • But we still confuse strength with rigidity, which is of questionable prudence as the percentage of Americans who say they are Christians decreases.

    Carolyn Bucior: Kim Simac vs. Clarence Darrow: How Wisconsin Recalls and Miss USA Mirror Scopes Monkey Trial Carolyn Bucior 2011

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