What's the difference between difficult and stiff?

Difficult


Definition:

  • (a.) Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous.
  • (a.) Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a difficult person.
  • (v. t.) To render difficult; to impede; to perplex.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Virtually every developed country has some form of property tax, so the idea that valuing residential property is uniquely difficult, or that it would be widely evaded, is nonsense.
  • (2) Although solely nociresponsive neurons are clearly likely to fill a role in the processing and signalling of pain in the conscious central nervous system, the way in which such useful specificity could be conveyed by multireceptive neurons is difficult to appreciate.
  • (3) In practice, however, the necessary dosage is difficult to predict.
  • (4) Cor triatriatum (CT) is a rare congenital defect, surgically correctable, and sometimes difficult to diagnose by cardiac catheterization.
  • (5) By drawing from the pathophysiology, this article discusses a multidimensional approach to the treatment of these difficult patients.
  • (6) Past imaging techniques shown in the courtroom have made the conventional rules of evidence more difficult because of the different informational content and format required for presentation of these data.
  • (7) The way we are going to pay for that is by making the rules the same for people who go into care homes as for people who get care at their home, and by means-testing the winter fuel payment, which currently isn’t.” Hunt said the plan showed the Conservatives were capable of making difficult choices.
  • (8) In many cases, physicians seek to protect themselves from involvement with these difficult, highly anxious patients by making a referral to a psychiatrist.
  • (9) The diagnosis of variant- or Prizmetal-angina is difficult because if insufficient specificity of the tests.
  • (10) The detection of these antibodies is difficult owing to the lack of standardization and of specificity of the laboratory tests.
  • (11) It was so difficult to keep a straight face when I was filming a sauna scene with Roy Barraclough, who played the mayor of Blackpool.
  • (12) That is, he believes, to look at massively difficult, interlocking problems through too narrow a lens.
  • (13) Conversion of the active-site thiol to thiocyanate makes it more difficult to inactivate the enzyme by treatment with Cd2+.
  • (14) If they end up going to another club that is difficult to take.
  • (15) Cigarette consumption has also been greater in urban areas, but it is difficult to estimate how much of the excess it can account for.
  • (16) The most difficult thing I've dealt with at work is ... the terminal illness of a valued colleague.
  • (17) In that respect, it's difficult to see Allen's anthem as little more than same old same old, and it's probably why I ultimately feel she misses the mark.
  • (18) This hypothesis is difficult to substantiate with direct measurements using human subjects.
  • (19) Extrapolation of gestational age from early crown-rump lengths (CRLs) has been difficult because previously established tables of CRL versus gestational age have contained few measurements at less than seven to eight weeks from the first day of the last menses.
  • (20) Companies had made investments in certain energy sources, the president said, so change could be “uncomfortable and difficult”.

Stiff


Definition:

  • (superl.) Not easily bent; not flexible or pliant; not limber or flaccid; rigid; firm; as, stiff wood, paper, joints.
  • (superl.) Not liquid or fluid; thick and tenacious; inspissated; neither soft nor hard; as, the paste is stiff.
  • (superl.) Firm; strong; violent; difficult to oppose; as, a stiff gale or breeze.
  • (superl.) Not easily subdued; unyielding; stubborn; obstinate; pertinacious; as, a stiff adversary.
  • (superl.) Not natural and easy; formal; constrained; affected; starched; as, stiff behavior; a stiff style.
  • (superl.) Harsh; disagreeable; severe; hard to bear.
  • (superl.) Bearing a press of canvas without careening much; as, a stiff vessel; -- opposed to crank.
  • (superl.) Very large, strong, or costly; powerful; as, a stiff charge; a stiff price.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If you turn the bowl upside down, the whites should be stiff enough not to fall out.
  • (2) The stiffness of the fibre first rose abruptly in response to stretch and then started to decrease linearly while the stretch went on; after the completion of stretch the stiffness decreased towards a steady value which was equal to that during the isometric tetanus at the same sarcomere length, indicating that the enhancement of isometric force is associated with decreased stiffness.
  • (3) Current methodology for the in vitro determination of aortic and large artery stiffness is reviewed and involves three approaches: (1) the estimation of distensibility by pulse wave velocity measurement; (2) the estimation of distensibility from the fractional diameter change of a given arterial segment by imaging techniques (e.g., angiography, Doppler ultrasound) against pressure change; (3) the estimation of compliance by determining volume change against pressure change in the arterial system during diastolic runoff from the Windkessel model of the circulation.
  • (4) The maintenance of adequate blood circulation requires a sufficient ventricular contractility; in addition, to eject blood, the ventricles must first receive a sufficient volume, requiring a low diastolic stiffness.
  • (5) Stiffness was reduced in approximate proportion to the ramp stretch rate, and the reduction was confined largely to the elastic component.
  • (6) Proof stress, ultimate tensile strength, elongation, and plastic stiffness have been measured and results compared by use of analyses of variance.
  • (7) In other words, the stiffness of these areas was low and the recovery from deformation was fast.
  • (8) But the same court also just refused to hear an appeal of a Minnesota woman who's been ordered to pay more than $220,000 for downloading two-dozen songs – a testament to Congress' gift to Hollywood and its allies in the form of absurdly stiff penalties for minor infringement.
  • (9) The tension-length relation for the unstimulated (passive) cell is also linear between 1r and the elastic limit, but is displaced from the active tension-length curve and is of reduced stiffness.
  • (10) Bilaterals in summit seasons can be stiff exchanges, where digressions can carry risks: not enough said, too much said.
  • (11) We measured the stiffness of comparable configurations (1 or 2 bars) under axial compression, four-point-bending in two planes, and torsion.
  • (12) Tiny, tiny... rodents – some soft and grey, some brown with black stripes, in paintings, posters, wallcharts, thumb-tacked magazine clippings and poorly executed crayon drawings, hurling themselves fatally in their thousands over the cliff of their island home; or crudely taxidermied and mounted, eyes glazed and little paws frozen stiff – on every available surface.
  • (13) The bone stiffness also correlates strongly with the geometry (area) and slightly with bone mass; however, an unexpectedly low correlation was found between stiffness and density.
  • (14) Finally, fibrosis may paradoxically reduce passive stiffness if it leads to a thinning of the interventricular septum.
  • (15) A young male nephrotic patient, who was given small doses of clofibrate for hyperlipaemia, developed muscle pain, stiffness and very high serum levels of muscle enzymes.
  • (16) Impaired left ventricular stiffness may be an additional criterion for using corinfar in patients with coronary heart disease.
  • (17) The increase of elastic fibres following denervation and reinnervation represents an obviously meaningful reaction that may compensate for loss of tonic properties of muscle spindles without causing stiffness.
  • (18) Only the bone-patellar tendon-bone unit had maximum force and stiffness greater than that of the ACL.
  • (19) The initial stiffness is poorly described by material or catheter gauge.
  • (20) The stiffness tester and torque meter were found to yield nearly the same measurements of bending deformation for orthodontic wires as small as .007 inch diameter, provided the different bending apparatus are calibrated to each other.