lax vs stern

lax

adj
  • Lacking care; neglectful, negligent. 

  • Loose; not tight or taut. 

  • Lenient and allowing for deviation; not strict. 

  • Describing an associative monoidal functor. 

noun
  • Lacrosse. 

  • A salmon. 

stern

adj
  • Grim and forbidding in appearance. 

  • Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner. 

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