What is "staid"

Usage examples of "staid".

Liverpool seemed staid and old-fashioned compared to the modern, pacy, heroic images of the American television series that dominated the tiny black and white British screen: Sunset Strip, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, Dragnet, Whirlybirds.

The day now began to send forth its first streams of light, when Jones made an apology to the stranger for having staid so long, and perhaps detained him from his rest.

His step was plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure.

Antokolsky, the painter Repin, as well as Gartman, who were all receptive to his unschooled style of music, and more tolerant of his alcoholic ways, than the rather staid composers of St Petersburg.

And realized that her hair was still caught up in the ugly bun that told the world she was a staid spinster, while inside her burned the same needs and wants that burned inside him, she caught up in a society that denied her womanhood, he caught up in a career that he had chosen when he was too young to know better.

They reminded her that, whether she be a staid spinster or a genteel lady or a wanton seductress, she was first and foremost a woman.

Dyke pouring his coffee and handing him his plate of ham and eggs, and half an hour later took himself off in his springless, skeleton wagon, humming a tune behind his beard and cracking the whip over the backs of his staid and solid farm horses.

Cleggett, the Brooklynite-this person whom young reporters conceived of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty Fact--was secretly a mighty reservoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance.

And he had been such unpromising material to start with: a lazy, spottily brilliant young instructor, dangerously contemptuous of academic life, taking a sophomoric pleasure in shocking his staid colleagues, with a suicidal tendency to make major issues out of minor disputes with deans and presidents.

To prevent any suggestion of unseemliness, the waitresses at restaurants frequented by students are always carefully selected from among a staid and elderly classy of women, by reason of which the German student can enjoy the delights of flirtation without fear and without reproach to anyone.

The American ambassador flew from Canberra to Sydney to welcome him, then flew him in an American plane to receptions in rowdy Brisbane, staid Adelaide and gracious Melbourne, with a final stop at the American embassy in Canberra, where a large assembly waited to greet the hero.

Lo by tendering him one-half his money in government bonds, and for this great wrong the peaceable Quaker, the humanitarian Unitarian, the orthodox Congregationalist and Presbyterian, the enthusiastic Methodist and staid Baptist, felt it but right Mr.

The slender, staid Thorwalians had nothing in common with the rotund, nervous Dakotan race.

James, all I saw was a simple building with undistinguished brickwork and a staid pedimented Ionic doorcase marking the entrance.

Lord, but at the thought of his staid, practical, harebrained wife he was growing hard.