(superl.) Fixed; hence, closely compressed; compact; substantial; hard; solid; -- applied to the matter of bodies; as, firm flesh; firm muscles, firm wood.
(superl.) Not easily excited or disturbed; unchanging in purpose; fixed; steady; constant; stable; unshaken; not easily changed in feelings or will; strong; as, a firm believer; a firm friend; a firm adherent.
(superl.) Solid; -- opposed to fluid; as, firm land.
(superl.) Indicating firmness; as, a firm tread; a firm countenance.
(a.) The name, title, or style, under which a company transacts business; a partnership of two or more persons; a commercial house; as, the firm of Hope & Co.
(a.) To fix; to settle; to confirm; to establish.
(a.) To fix or direct with firmness.
Example Sentences:
(1) Villagers, including one man who has been left disabled and the relatives of six men who were killed, are suing ABG in the UK high court, represented by British law firm Leigh Day, alleging that Tanzanian police officers shot unarmed locals.
(2) However, direct measurements of mediator release should be carried out to reach a firm conclusion.
(3) Video games specialist Game was teetering on the brink of collapse on Friday after a rescue deal put forward by private equity firm OpCapita appeared to have been given the cold shoulder by lenders who are owed more than £100m.
(4) One is that the issue of whether the World Cup should go ahead in Russia and Qatar still firmly remains on the table.
(5) Neil Blessitt Bristol • We need to establish what the legal position is with regard to the establishment by the government of a private company co-owned by the Department of Health and the French firm Sopra Steria.
(6) Particular attention has been paid to diabetes mellitus and chronic pancreatitis, but a firm conclusion cannot be drawn.
(7) Pupils who disrupt the learning of their classmates are dealt with firmly and, in many cases, a short suspension is an effective way of nipping bad behaviour in the bud."
(8) Cloning of the A-T allele(s) will assist in the early or prenatal diagnosis of A-T and provide a firm basis for determining who, in the general population, carries this gene and is therefore at a high risk of cancer.
(9) We are firmly opposed to that," an unidentified spokesman from the ministry of industry and information technology told the state news agency, Xinhua.
(10) Officers arrested her last month during the protest against oil drilling by the energy firm Cuadrilla at Balcombe in West Sussex – a demonstration Lucas has attended several times.
(11) "At the moment there are about 1,600 criminal justice firms, and they all have a contract with the lord chancellor.
(12) VAT increases don't just hit the poor more than the rich, they also hit small firms, threaten retail jobs and, by boosting inflation, could also lead to higher interest rates."
(13) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
(14) We firmly believe that a systematic approach to the 12-lead ECG can provide information that can diagnose the difference between ventricular and supraventricular tachycardia, and in many instances diagnose the mechanism and site of origin of the supraventricular tachycardia.
(15) Terry Waite Chair, Benedict Birnberg Deputy chair, Antonio Ferrara CEO The Prisons Video Trust • If I want to build a bridge, I call in a firm of civil engineers who specialise in bridge-building.
(16) The court hearing – in a case of the kind likely to be heard in secret if the government's justice and security bill is passed – was requested by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity Reprieve, acting for Serdar Mohammed, tortured by the Afghan security services after being transferred to their custody by UK forces.
(17) Doubts about Hinkley Point have deepened after a detailed report by HSBC’s energy analysts described eight key challenges to the project, which will be built by the state-backed French firm EDF and be part-financed by investment from China .
(18) China's relations with the NTC were strained last week when it emerged Chinese arms firms had talked to Muammar Gaddafi's representatives about weapons sales .
(19) It may not point to independence – nor, given that large swaths of Wales remain firmly dominated by Labour, mean any huge advance for Plaid Cymru.
(20) In order to identify these anchorage structures, the non-DNA materials that remain firmly bound to chromosomal DNA under conditions that disintegrate the high salt-stable architecture of nuclei were investigated.
Stiffness
Definition:
(n.) The quality or state of being stiff; as, the stiffness of cloth or of paste; stiffness of manner; stiffness of character.
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.