hard vs stern

hard

adj
  • Tough and muscular. 

  • In a physical form, not digital. 

  • Having a high energy (high frequency; short wavelength). 

  • Of silk: not having had the natural gum boiled off. 

  • Having a comparatively larger or a ninety-degree angle. 

  • Containing alcohol. 

  • Having disagreeable and abrupt contrasts in colour or shading. 

  • Made up of parallel rays, producing clearly defined shadows. 

  • Strong. 

  • Sexually aroused; having an erect penis. 

  • Difficult or requiring a lot of effort to do, understand, experience, or deal with. 

  • Severe, harsh, unfriendly, brutal. 

  • Unquestionable, unequivocal. 

  • Rigid in the drawing or distribution of the figures; formal; lacking grace of composition. 

  • High in dissolved chemical salts, especially those of calcium. 

  • Having the capability of being a permanent magnet by being a material with high magnetic coercivity (compare soft). 

  • Demanding a lot of effort to endure. 

  • Far, extreme. 

  • Velarized or plain, rather than palatalized. 

  • Of a market: having more demand than supply; being a seller's market. 

  • Using a manual or physical process, not by means of a software command. 

  • Hardened; having unusually strong defences. 

  • Having muscles that are tightened as a result of intense, regular exercise. 

  • Resistant to pressure. 

  • hardcore 

  • Plosive. 

  • Unvoiced. 

adv
  • With much force or effort. 

  • Compactly. 

  • With difficulty. 

noun
  • Crack cocaine. 

  • A tyre whose compound is softer than superhards, and harder than mediums. 

  • Hard labor. 

  • A firm or paved beach or slope convenient for hauling vessels out of the water. 

stern

adj
  • Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner. 

  • Grim and forbidding in appearance. 

noun
  • A bird, the black tern. 

  • The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog. 

  • The hinder part of anything. 

  • The post of management or direction. 

  • The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel. 

verb
  • To propel or move backward or stern-first in the water. 

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