Starched

ppl. a. [f. STARCH v. + -ED¹.]

  1.  Stiffened with or as with starch. a. of linen, etc. Also with out. Hence, of a person.

1617.  B. Rich, Irish Hubbub, 9. Wee haue conuerted the coller of steele to a yellow-starched-band.

1707.  J. Stevens, trans. Quevedo’s Com. Wks. (1709), 223. My curious starch’d Band.

1818.  Scott, Rob Roy, i. The ex-minister, as bolt upright as a starched ruff and laced cassock could make him.

1862.  Mrs. H. Wood, Channings, xxxvi. Martha wore a crinoline…, and a starched-out muslin gown over it.

1891.  T. Hardy, Tess, xxv. A broad-brimmed hat and highly-starched cambric morning-gown.

  † b.  of the beard or hair. Obs.

1599.  B. Jonson, Ev. Man out of Hum., IV. iv. Who? this i’ the starcht beard?

1633.  P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., VII. 71. Some with black terrours his faint conscience baited, That wide he star’d, and starched hair did stand.

  2.  fig. Stiff, formal, precise. a. of a person, his countenance, behavior, etc.

1599.  B. Jonson, Ev. Man out of Hum., I. ii. And when you come to Playes, be humorous, looke with a good starcht face and ruffle your brow like a new boot.

1607.  Puritan, I. iv. 54. Good Cocks-combe! what makes that pure, starch’d foole here?

1626.  Shirley, Brothers, V. i. One boisterous fellow, With a starched voice and a worse vizard … quoited me Into the coach again.

1661.  Wood, Life, 3 May (O.H.S.), I. 395. John Haselwood, a proud, starch’d, formal and sycophantizing clisterpipe.

1662.  E. Hopkins, Serm. Funeral A. Grevil (1663), 35. This taught him to outstrip in true wisdome, temperance and fortitude … whatsoever those starch’t and formall moralists did.

1708.  Swift, Abol. Chr., Misc. (1711), 172. Does the Gospel any where prescribe a starched squeezed Countenance, a Stiff formal Gate.

1749.  Smollett, Gil Blas, VIII. ix. (1782), III. 192. A parcel of insolent fellows, with their self-sufficient starched airs! Ibid. (1771), Humphry Cl., 2 April. A maiden of forty-five, exceedingly starched, vain, and ridiculous.

1822.  W. Irving, Braceb. Hall, xxvi. 235. Mrs. Hannah moved about with starched dignity among the rustics.

1837.  Dickens, Pickw., xxvii. His looks were starched, but his white neckerchief was not.

1862.  Sala, Accepted Addr., 5. I was seriously afraid that I should be married to some starched old maid.

  b.  of an oration, ceremony.

1659.  Wood, Life, Dec. (O.H.S.), I. 300. And ‘scandalus’ it was to have a formall starcht prayer before it.

1672.  Gale, Crt. Gentiles, I. III. x. (ed. 2), 108. Aristotle tels us, that it [an oration] must be natural, not feigned, artificial or starched.

1693.  Humours Town, 31. Syllogising, that damn’d starch’d method of the Schools.

a. 1734.  North, Exam., II. v. § 133 (1740), 398. And they wrote it as he spoke it, which useth not to be in any starched Method.

1792.  Mary Wollstonecraft, Rights Wom., v. 217. A cultivated understanding and an affectionate heart will never want starched rules of decorum.

1883.  Mrs. R. T. Ritchie, Bk. Sibyls, i. 28. A contrast to prim, starched scholastic life.

1884.  Christian World, 19 June, 463/4. The stiff starched ‘order of service,’ the rented pews, with the odious distinction of free seats.

  Hence Starchedly adv., Starchedness.

1671.  L. Addison, West Barbary, 105. Don Diego de Palma … chanceing to smile at the Moors Deportment, as not answering the starch’dness of his own Nation.

1702.  C. Mather, Magn. Chr., VII. ii. (1852), 496. The fierceness of his talking in publick, and the starchtness of his living in private.

1705.  J. Dunton, Life, 145. ’Twas the Vitals of Religion that she minded, and not Forms and Modes; and if she found the Power of it in her heart, she did not think her self oblig’d to such a Starch’dness of Carriage as is usual amongst the Bostonians.

1873.  Browning, Red Cott. Nt.-cap, 379. See, the church With its white steeple,… Starchedly warrants all beneath is matched By all above, one snowy innocence!