stiffs

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of stiff.

   The coroner reported that three stiffs had arrived at the morgue overnight.

   He dismissed the suits in the boardroom as humorless stiffs.

   Note

   Every noun behind this plural is slang, and the range is wide: corpses, ordinary men of no distinction, flops, swindlers' marks. The noun can name either side of a cheat. Stiffs may be the people deceived, or, in US restaurant talk, diners who walk out without paying. A broader US use covers customers who simply leave no tip. In a sentence like "two stiffs at table six", only context tells you which.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of stiff.

   The landlord regularly stiffs his tenants out of their security deposits.

   Whenever the bill comes, he stiffs the rest of the table and slips away.

   Note

   The verb form usually takes a person as its object: he stiffs the waiter, she stiffs her landlord. Its meanings slide from skipping a bill to tipping meanly to outright cheating. In slang it can go as far as "to kill". Without an object it is informal for "to fail", as when a new show stiffs. The person left unpaid can turn up in the plural noun, which names both cheaters and the cheated.

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