artificially formal; "that artificial humility that her husband hated"; "contrived coyness"; "a stilted letter of acknowledgment"; "when people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation"
Elevated as if on stilts; hence, pompous; bombastic; as, a stilted style; stilted declamation
If someone speaks in a stilted way, they speak in a formal or unnatural way, for example because they are not relaxed. We made polite, stilted conversation = laboured easy. a stilted style of writing or speaking is formal and unnatural