Meaning of stilted in English

stilted

adjective

disapproving

/ˈstɪl.tɪd/ us

/ˈstɪl.tɪd/

Add to word list Add to word list

(of a person's behaviour or way of speaking or writing) too formal and not smooth or natural:

He writes in a formal and somewhat stilted style.

The dialogue sounded stilted and unnatural, perhaps because of the translation from the original Russian.

Synonyms

artificial

contrived disapproving

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Ways of talking

See more results »

Related word

stiltedly

(Definition of stilted from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

stilted | American Dictionary

stilted

adjective

/ˈstɪl·tɪd/

Add to word list Add to word list

(of behavior, speech, or writing) too formal and not smooth or natural:

Legal language tends to be very stilted.

(Definition of stilted from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of stilted

stilted

The language is stilted, typical 'translatorese', so much so that some sentences are virtually incomprehensible.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The text, in traditional number-opera format, is indeed stilted and dreary.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As a kind of diary, in parts it is written in the stilted, abbreviated manner of that genre.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Too much emphasis on any one element would lead to the production of narratives which were stilted and not naturalistic.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The rhetoric of his speeches is also somewhat stilted and archaic, probably by design.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The lines, spoken staccato by the actors, are choppy, stilted fragments rather than smooth streams of input.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Besides, the mensural interpretation was artificial and yielded stilted transcriptions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In his serenade, for example, the rhymes are obvious and stilted; more grotesque still are the violations of metre and the misplaced accents.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because of the small sample of stilted trees, only unbuttressed and buttressed trees are considered hereafter.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The former is fine, if a little stilted, while the latter is quite awkward with either passive auxiliary.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Echoing, and technological attempts at dealing with it, render much of the speech stilted and prone to breakdown.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Although somewhat stilted due to its verb-initial order, this sentence is grammatical, embedded in a larger narrative context.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because the language of the popular press is lively and colloquial, in contrast to the stilted formulaic language of official publications, people believe what it says is true.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In fact, to describe the central performances in these terms could be misleading: to our eyes, the acting looks mannered, with a rather stilted, melodramatic quality about it.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Photius' style is impersonal, not to say stilted, and he would hardly have needed to tell his brother who their father was.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of stilted?