rigor

From Old French, from Latin rigor (“stiffness, rigidity, rigor, cold, harshness”), from rigere (“to be rigid”).

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪɡɚ/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

  • Audio (Texas):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪɡə(ɹ)
• Homophones: rigger, rigour

rigor (countable and uncountable, plural rigors)

1. US spelling of rigour.
2. (physiology, informal) Ellipsis of rigor mortis.
   • 2005, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade, page 4, paragraph 3:

     Heat always upped the rate at which rigor gripped a corpse.

Borrowed from Latin rigōrem.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [riˈɣor]

• Audio (Barcelona):

  (file)

rigor m or f (plural rigors)

1. rigour/rigor
2. precision, exactness
3. harshness (of a climate)

• rigorós

• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “rigor”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)
• “rigor”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “rigor”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2026

rigor m (apocopated)

1. apocopic form of rigore

From rigeō (“to be rigid”) + -or.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈrɪ.ɡɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈriː.ɡor]

rigor m (genitive rigōris); third declension

1. stiffness, rigidity
2. rigor, cold, harshness, severity

Third-declension noun.

• rigōrātus

• “rigor”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “rigor”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "rigor", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “rigor”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “rigor”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

rigor oblique singular, f (oblique plural rigors, nominative singular rigor, nominative plural rigors)

1. harshness; severity
2. stiffness; rigidity

• English: rigor, rigour
• French: rigueur

• Rhymes: (Portugal, São Paulo) -oɾ, (Brazil) -oʁ
• Hyphenation: ri‧gor

rigor m (plural rigores)

1. rigour (higher level of difficulty)
2. rigour (severity or strictness)
3. rigidity; inflexibility

• rígido
• rigoroso

• “rigor”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “rigor”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

• IPA^(key): /rîɡor/
• Hyphenation: ri‧gor

rȉgor m inan (Cyrillic spelling ри̏гор)

1. rigour

Borrowed from Latin rigōrem.

• IPA^(key): /riˈɡoɾ/ [riˈɣ̞oɾ]
• Rhymes: -oɾ
• Syllabification: ri‧gor

rigor m (plural rigores)

1. rigour

• “rigor”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025