"Stolid" is a formal, semi-common word, perfect for describing blank, robotic, emotionless people and things.

Calling people stolid, especially to their faces, is insulting. Instead, you might talk about stolid literary characters, or about people's stolid expressions, attitudes, or comments: "their stolid grimaces," "her stolid support," "her stolid opposition," "his stolid reply."

If you describe someone's focus or concentration as stolid, it's not an insult: it's a way to express that they've blocked out all emotion, maybe even all thought, to accomplish the task at hand. "She handles irate customers with politeness and stolid concentration."

And if you like to get figurative, you might talk about stolid creations: things that seem to offer or express no warmth, no excitement, no sexiness or novelty. Writers have described certain cars, movies, products, and corporations as stolid. Here's Will Ferrell playing a businessman who starts out stolid but becomes emotionally explosive about his stolid car.

(Source)

examples:

"He propped the rifle... and sighted with stolid concentration: one shot... two... three, and each found its man."
  — Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife, 1997

"Post-Internet, many people assume that big problems can be solved by swarms of small, loosely networked nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. Big hierarchical organizations are dinosaurs... This is misguided. The big, stolid agencies — the health ministries, the infrastructure builders, the procurement agencies — are the bulwarks of the civil and global order."
   — David Brooks, New York Times, 15 September 2014

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If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "stolid" without saying "apathetic" or "impassive."

try it out:

Fill in the blanks: "(Something exciting) replaced the stolidity of (something boring)."

Example 1: "My kid's P. E. classes are pretty awesome compared to mine back in the day. Yoga and relays have replaced the stolidity of jogging and dodgeball."

Example 2: "In many ways, BMW was the Apple of its day. It was doing things its own way, bucking the stolid stoicism of Mercedes-Benz’s sedans and the in-your-face brashness of American muscle cars."
  — Jason H. Harper, The Verge, 23 February 2016

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month: Poetic Connections!

Check out three snippets from a poem, along with three words we've studied—some beautiful, some outrageous—and decide which word you'll connect to each snippet. To see the definitions, highlight the hidden white text after each word. And to see an example, head here.

Try this set today:

"[love is more thicker than forget]" by E. E. Cummings

Snippets:
1. "love is... less littler than forgive"
2. "it is most sane and sunly / and more it cannot die"
3. "than all the sky which only / is higher than the sky"

Words:
A. hyperbolic (meaning... poetically exaggerated)
B. magnanimous (meaning... generous, willing to loverlook mistakes)
C. sempiternal (meaning... eternal, everlasting)

To see one possible set of answers, scroll all the way down; if your answers don’t match these, that's fine: all that matters is that yours make sense to you.

review this word:

1. One opposite of STOLID is

A. FLUID.
B. HUSHED.
C. EXPRESSIVE.

2. A writer for Nature described John Wheeler as "superficially stolid," but with a _____ hidden within.

A. vivid imagination
B. political ambition
C. sense of persistence

Answers to the review questions: 1. C 2. A Suggested answers to the game: I'd connect hyperbolic to snippet 3 for the grand comparison to the sky, magnanimous to snippet 1 for the ability to forgive, and sempiternal to snippet 2 for love never dying.

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.