Noun
The quality or state of being rigid; want of pliability; the quality of resisting change of form; the amount of resistance with which a body opposes change of form; -- opposed to flexibility, ductility, malleability, and softness.
Stiffness of appearance or manner; want of ease or elegance.
Severity; rigor.
Source: Webster's dictionaryThe difference between management and administration (which is what the bureaucrats used to do exclusively)... is the difference... between choice and rigidity. Robert Heller
They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors. Carl Sagan
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media. Noam Chomsky
Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break. Bill James
In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas. Michael Crichton
Lack of flexibility manifests itself as stress. ...stress will occur when one or more variables of the system are pushed to their extreme values, which induces increased rigidity throughout the system. Fritjof Capra