Stuffed-shirt? oh no!

Posted by GPP on August 23, 2003

In Reply to: Stuffed-shirt? oh no! posted by sphinx on August 23, 2003

::: When a college student "emerges from academia", what does it mean? What is an academia?

::Not 'an academia'. A general noun, not taking an article ('a', 'an', 'the'). From the word 'academy'; and meaning, roughly, the generality of colleges or universities; thus, the student has completed his/her formal studies. The phrase as quoted by you is very artificial and self-conscious, and would only be used by a stuffed-shirt academic.

: Who is a stuffed-shirt?

: Seems it's a derogatory term. But it is taken from Leo Buscaglia, the author of Papa, My Father!

Well, okay, let me clean up that last sentence to read merely "The phrase as quoted by you is artificial and self-conscious". I've never read Buscaglia; is it possible he may have been using the phrase "emerges from academia" with a small ironic smile on his face? Away, finally, from all of those oh-so-serious professors, and now out in the "real world"?

Looking up the term "stuffed shirt" (I had hyphenated it before, because I was using it as a compound adjective to describe the noun "academic"), I find this at Merriam Webster Online:

Main Entry: stuffed shirt
Function: noun
Date: 1904
: a smug, conceited, and usually pompous person often with an inflexibly conservative or reactionary attitude.