as in conservative
a person with old-fashioned ideas
the committee is dominated by old stick-in-the-muds who have little interest in bringing new ideas to the table
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Recent Examples of stick-in-the-mud
David Corenswet plays, quite literally, a stick-in-the-mud character.
—
Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
In the Herbert Ross film, Bacon played big-city teen Ren McCormack, who moves to the small town of Bomont, where its stick-in-the-mud local minster, the Rev. Shaw Moore (John Lithgow), has instituted a ban on dancing.
—EW.com, 9 Nov. 2023
Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
In the Herbert Ross film, Bacon played big-city teen Ren McCormack, who moves to the small town of Bomont, where its stick-in-the-mud local minster, the Rev. Shaw Moore (John Lithgow), has instituted a ban on dancing.
—EW.com, 9 Nov. 2023
Recent Examples of Synonyms for stick-in-the-mud
Noun
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By 2010, however, this relationship had inverted, with conservatives expressing the lowest levels of trust in science.—
Matt Motta,
Scientific American,
10 July 2025
-
Nevada’s Experience: While the idea has support from both liberals and conservatives, the biggest existing attempt to do so, in Nevada, has so far created little affordable housing.—
Abe Streep,
ProPublica,
8 July 2025
Noun
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These are programs that deal exclusively with veterans, so the staff there have an appreciation and a sensitivity to issues that veterans experience.—
Laura Schulte,
jsonline.com,
14 July 2025
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The veteran will report on July 22 and the team will hold their first practice the next day.—
Antwan Staley,
New York Daily News,
14 July 2025
Noun
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These are people who know AI and have grown up with this stuff that these old fogies haven't.—
Alison Snyder,
Axios,
23 Feb. 2025
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And some of us older fogies, Joni Mitchell and Carole King.—
Lars Brandle,
Billboard,
10 Oct. 2023
Noun
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That likely explains why the impression of the fossil housed at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Germany had long been classified as Homoeosaurus maximiliani.—
Sarah Kuta,
Smithsonian Magazine,
11 July 2025
-
The larger of the two fossils unfortunately didn’t survive its encounter with diggers’ drill bit.—
Andrew Paul Jul 10,
Popular Science,
10 July 2025
Cite this Entry
“Stick-in-the-mud.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/stick-in-the-mud. Accessed 18 Jul. 2025.
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