rigid

From Middle English rigide, from Latin rigidus (“stiff”), from rigeō (“I am stiff”). Compare rigor. Merged with Middle English rigged, rygged, rugged (“upright like a spine, rigid”, literally “ridged”), from ridge +‎ -ed.

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• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪd͡ʒ.ɪd/
• Rhymes: -ɪdʒɪd

rigid (comparative rigider or more rigid, superlative rigidest or most rigid)

1. Stiff, rather than flexible.

   Synonym: inflexible

   Antonym: flexible

2. Fixed, rather than moving.

   Antonym: moving

   • 2011, David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, Penguin Books, page 5:

     A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys.

3. Rigorous and unbending.
4. Uncompromising.

   Antonym: compromising

Construction of USS Shenandoah, a rigid (sense 1), showing her internal framework.

rigid (plural rigids)

1. (aviation) An airship whose shape is maintained solely by an internal and/or external rigid structural framework, without using internal gas pressure to stiffen the vehicle (the lifting gas is at atmospheric pressure); typically also equipped with multiple redundant gasbags, unlike other types of airship.

   The rigid could reach the greatest sizes and speeds of any airship, but was expensive to build and bulky to store. Rigids fell out of favor after the R101 and Hindenburg disasters made the type seem unsafe to the travelling public.

2. A bicycle with no suspension system.

(airship):

• Zeppelin (broad sense)

(airship):

• dirigible

(airship):

• Zeppelin (narrow sense)

(airship):

• nonrigid
• semirigid

• “rigid”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “rigid”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• IPA^(key): [ˈr͈ʲiɣʲiðʲ]

From Proto-Celtic *regeti (“to extend, stretch, straighten”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to straighten, stretch, rule”).[1][2]

rigid (conjunct ·reig or ·raig)

1. to stretch, to distend
   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 20^a23

     rechti .i. ro·recht ho methi ⁊ inmairi

     distended, i.e. it has been distended by fat and obesity.

• Middle Irish: rigid
  • Irish: righ (“to stretch”)

From Proto-Celtic *rigeti (“bind”), from Proto-Indo-European *Hreyǵ- (“to bind, reach”).[1]

rigid (conjunct ·rig)

1. to rule, direct
   • c. 700, Críth Gablach, published in Críth Gablach (1941, Dublin: Stationery Office), edited by Daniel Anthony Binchy, §30

     Rí, cid ara n-eperr? Arindí riges cumachtu(i) chun[d]rig fora túatha(i).

     The king, why do they call him that? Because he wields [exerts, MacNeill] the power of control [correction, MacNeill] over his people [in a túath].

   • c. 800-840, Orthanach, A Chóicid chóem Chairpri chrúaid from the Book of Leinster, LL line 6094

     Reraig Herind ardrí Molt[...]

     The High King [Ailill] Molt ruled over Ireland...

• Middle Irish: rigid

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “1 rigid”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (both etymologies)
• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “2 rigid”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (as root of derivatives of Etymology 2)

Borrowed from French rigide.

rigid m or n (feminine singular rigidă, masculine plural rigizi, feminine and neuter plural rigide)

1. rigid

• rigiditate