kindly vs stern

kindly

adj
  • Having a kind personality; kind, warmhearted, sympathetic. 

adv
  • Kind of, somewhat. 

  • In a kind manner, out of kindness. 

  • In a favourable way. 

  • With kind acceptance; used with take. 

  • Used to make a polite request: please. 

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 kindly and stern occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )