bracing vs stiffening

bracing

noun
  • A brace. 

  • A form of the military attention stance. 

  • That which braces. 

adj
  • Invigorating or stimulating. 

stiffening

noun
  • An item, material or feature that makes something stiffer. 

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