> as lemmas

1600 B. Jonson Every Man out of his Humor i. ii. sig. Ciii^v And when you come to Plaies, bee Humorous, looke with a good starch't face, and ruffle your brow like a new boot. View more context for this quotation

1607 ‘W. S.’ Puritaine i. 12 Good Cocks-combe? what makes that pure-starch'd foole here?

1652 J. Shirley Brothers v. 56 in Six New Playes (1653) One boysterous fellow With a starch'd voice, and a worse vizard..quoited me Into the coach agen.

1662 Bp. E. Hopkins Funeral Serm. (1663) 35 This taught him to outstrip in true wisdome, temperance and fortitude..whatsoever those starch't and formall moralists did.

1711 J. Swift Argument abolishing Christianity in Misc. Prose & Verse 172 Does the Gospel any where prescribe a starcht squeezed Countenance, a Stiff formal Gate.

1745 D. E. Baker tr. ‘A. F. de Avellaneda’ Don Quixote II. vi. v. 206 We must send for those fine effeminate Fellows, those starched up Beaus of our Sex.

1749 T. Smollett tr. A. R. Le Sage Gil Blas III. viii. ix. 162 A parcel of insolent fellows with their self-sufficient, starched airs.

1822 W. Irving Bracebridge Hall xxvi. 235 Mrs. Hannah moved about with starched dignity among the rustics.

1837 C. Dickens Pickwick Papers xxvii. 276 His looks were starched, but his white neckerchief was not.

1862 G. A. Sala Accepted Addr. 5 I was seriously afraid that I should be married to some starched old maid.

1906 J. P. Stewart Diagnosis of Nerv. Dis. xvii. 243 The patient stands with the trunk stooping forwards, the face appearing ‘starched’ and expressionless.

1936 Cosmopolitan Nov. 171/1 Ain't talking to the girls tonight, eh, sport? You only talk to your starched-up good girls. That it, Johnny?

1989 N. Cave And Ass saw Angel iii. 186 So starched and pursy was her gait that she looked neither left nor right but straight ahead.

2006 Psychologies (U.K. ed.) July 45/4 She has set her heart on a handsome but heavily starched academic..who is poised to be unhappily married to a frumpy killjoy.