ease vs hardness

ease

noun
  • Freedom from pain, hardship, and annoyance, sometimes (derogatory, archaic) idleness, sloth. 

  • Additional space provided to allow greater movement. 

  • Release from constraint, obligation, or a constrained position. 

  • Followed by of or from: release from or reduction of pain, hardship, or annoyance. 

  • Ability, the means to do something 

  • Freedom from difficulty. 

  • Skill, dexterity, facility. 

  • Freedom from worry and concern; peace; sometimes (derogatory, archaic) indifference. 

  • Freedom from effort, leisure, rest. 

  • Freedom from financial effort or worry; affluence. 

  • Freedom from embarrassment or awkwardness; grace. 

verb
  • To move (something) slowly and carefully. 

  • To free (something) from pain, worry, agitation, etc. 

  • To reduce the difficulty of (something). 

  • To proceed with little effort. 

  • To alleviate, assuage or lessen (pain). 

  • To loosen or slacken the tension on a line. 

  • To lessen in intensity. 

  • To give respite to (someone). 

hardness

noun
  • An instance of this quality; hardship. 

  • The quality of being hard. 

  • The resistance to scratching, cutting, indentation or abrasion of a metal or other solid material. 

  • The penetrating ability of electromagnetic radiation, such as x-rays; generally, the shorter the wavelength, the harder and more penetrating the radiation. 

  • The measure of resistance to damage of a facility, equipment, installation, or telecommunications infrastructure when subjected to attack. 

  • A measure of how hard a material is 

  • The quantity of calcium carbonate dissolved in water, usually expressed in parts per million (ppm). 

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