dear vs stiff

dear

adj
  • Severe, or severely affected; sore. 

  • A formal way to start (possibly after my) addressing somebody at the beginning of a letter, memo etc. 

  • Loving, affectionate, heartfelt 

  • Loved; lovable. 

  • Precious to or greatly valued by someone. 

  • An ironic way to start (often after my) addressing an inferior. 

  • Lovely; kind. 

  • A formal way to start (often after my) addressing somebody one likes or regards kindly. 

  • High in price; expensive. 

adv
  • Dearly; at a high price. 

noun
  • An affectionate, familiar term of address, such as used between husband and wife. 

  • A beloved person. 

  • A very kind, loving person. 

  • An elderly person, especially a woman. 

stiff

adj
  • Painful as a result of excessive or unaccustomed exercise. 

  • Of a shot: landing so close to the flagstick that it should be very easy to sink the ball with the next shot. 

  • Delivered more forcefully than needed, whether intentionally or accidentally, thus causing legitimate pain to the opponent. 

  • Dead, deceased. 

  • Erect. 

  • Inflexible; rigid. 

  • Beaten until so aerated that they stand up straight on their own. 

  • Formal in behavior; unrelaxed. 

  • Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible. 

  • Harsh, severe. 

  • Potent. 

  • Having a dense consistency; thick; (by extension) Difficult to stir. 

  • Of an equation: for which certain numerical solving methods are numerically unstable, unless the step size is taken to be extremely small. 

  • Keeping upright. 

noun
  • Any hard hand where it is possible to exceed 21 by drawing an additional card. 

  • A person who leaves (especially a restaurant) without paying the bill. 

  • A customer who does not leave a tip. 

  • A person who is deceived, as a mark or pigeon in a swindle. 

  • A cadaver; a dead person. 

  • Negotiable instruments, possibly forged. 

  • A note or letter surreptitiously sent by an inmate. 

  • A flop; a commercial failure. 

  • An average person, usually male, of no particular distinction, skill, or education. 

verb
  • To tip ungenerously. 

  • To kill. 

  • To cheat someone 

  • To fail to pay that which one owes (implicitly or explicitly) to another, especially by departing hastily. 

adv
  • Of the wind, with great force; strongly. 

How often have the words dear and stiff occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )