Stuffed shirt means a pompous, formal, self-important, or overly respectable person. In poetry, the idiom reduces social pretension to clothing, suggesting a person filled with starch, convention, and hollow dignity rather than living warmth. It suits satire of officials, scholars, aristocrats, moralists, or anyone whose manners conceal vanity. A poet may use it to puncture social authority and expose the absurdity of rigid respectability. The phrase is useful for studying comic deflation, class tone, and the body inside social costume.

A stuffed shirt is a pompous, stiff, self-important person, usually one attached to status, manners, or empty respectability. In poetry, the phrase can satirise officials, academics, gentlemen, clerics, or social climbers. The clothing image is central: the person seems filled with padding rather than life. Students should notice the contrast between outward formality and inward emptiness. It pairs well with collars, waistcoats, speeches, offices, and hollow dignity.