What's the difference between stern and stolid?

Stern


Definition:

  • (n.) The black tern.
  • (superl.) Having a certain hardness or severity of nature, manner, or aspect; hard; severe; rigid; rigorous; austere; fixed; unchanging; unrelenting; hence, serious; resolute; harsh; as, a sternresolve; a stern necessity; a stern heart; a stern gaze; a stern decree.
  • (v. t.) The helm or tiller of a vessel or boat; also, the rudder.
  • (v. t.) The after or rear end of a ship or other vessel, or of a boat; the part opposite to the stem, or prow.
  • (v. t.) Fig.: The post of management or direction.
  • (v. t.) The hinder part of anything.
  • (v. t.) The tail of an animal; -- now used only of the tail of a dog.
  • (a.) Being in the stern, or being astern; as, the stern davits.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Tap the relevant details into Google, though, and the real names soon appear before your eyes: the boss in question, stern and yet oddly quixotic, is Phyllis Westberg of Harold Ober Associates.
  • (2) Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels.” The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern , former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change.
  • (3) Quenching of intrinsic fluorescence of (Ca2+-Mg2+)-ATPase by acrylamide, performed in the presence of Ca2+, gave evidence for a single class of tryptophan residues with Stern-Volmer constant (KSV) of 10 M-1.
  • (4) The death of your battery is now one of the factors that will push you to upgrade.” As Joanna Stern put it in her review of the iPhone 6s in the Wall Street Journal: “The No 1 thing people want in a smartphone is better battery life.
  • (5) Before we meet, I have to have a stern talk with myself about not mentioning the game last August in which all Arsenal fans will contend that Barton got new signing Gervinho sent off on his debut; he's had similarly abrasive encounters since with fellow midfielders, Karl Henry from Wolves and Norwich's Bradley Johnson, the latter earning him a three-match ban.
  • (6) Heshel Melamed, a stern rabbinical paterfamilias, was his maternal grandfather.
  • (7) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
  • (8) The influential economist, Lord Nicholas Stern, welcomed the proposal as "strong and reasonable" and "with the interests of developing countries at its heart".
  • (9) Tryptophanyl fluorescence of the lipoprotein assembly was quenched as indicated by a reduction in the effective Stern-Volmer constant.
  • (10) "There's funding that was agreed to as part of the Copenhagen accord, and as a general matter, the US is going to use its funds to go to countries that have indicated an interest to be part of the accord," the state department envoy, Todd Stern, told the Washington Post.
  • (11) 3.43am BST Spurs 57-56 Heat - 6:15 remaining, 3rd quarter And some thoughts via email from Daniel Vazquez-Paluch: I can't help wondering if LeBron is a victim of Stern's rule changes more than his own tendency to disappear.
  • (12) It "failed to recognise the significance" of damage to a gas fracking well in 2011 and did not report it to government officials for six months, leading to a stern reprimand by the energy minister, papers released under the Freedom of Information Act show.
  • (13) Treatment with chymotrypsin to block the E1 to E2 transition results in a new set of quenching parameters which are unchanged with Na or K. Even after detergent denaturation (1% sodium dodecyl sulfate for 30 min), Stern-Volmer plots are nonlinear, and a significant fraction of tryptophan residues remain inaccessible to quencher.
  • (14) (At the time, he told shockjock Howard Stern on the record that he approved of it.)
  • (15) The local undertakers were pleased to discover the great Henty to be the man they had always imagined - a full-bearded giant, stern and wise, dressed like a warrior hero or - much the same thing - a Victorian gentleman with the whiff of gunpowder and the clash of sabres about him.
  • (16) At low quencher concentrations, the quenching follows the classical Stern-Volmer law.
  • (17) A couple of times I’ve raised my voice, been stern and they’ve responded.
  • (18) Quenching of pyrene fluorescence emission of labeled ATPase by acrylamide and cesium chloride gave linear Stern-Volmer plots.
  • (19) In a wide-ranging news conference at the end of the G7 summit in the Wetterstein Mountains in Germany, Obama issued a stern warning against Russia, accepted praise for the work of US prosecutors at confronting corruption in world soccer, gave the US supreme court advice on how to rule in an upcoming healthcare case and defended his immigration policies.
  • (20) Orthodontic treatment in those days, like life in general, was simple and stern.

Stolid


Definition:

  • (a.) Hopelessly insensible or stupid; not easily aroused or excited; dull; impassive; foolish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The rhythm section is strong: occasionally stolid, always solid and sometimes – in particular on their career highpoint, the extraordinary "damn you, England" rant called "The Queen is Dead" – totally inspired.
  • (2) The menu is stolidly British – tea and biscuits, fish and chips and club sandwiches are favourites.
  • (3) As the Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie G Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010 , “Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group.
  • (4) He saw the new forces of educational selection in postwar Britain as yielding a new "restless elite", a creative minority rising above "the stolid majority".
  • (5) He arrived in office with the image of a stolid traditionalist, suffered some early wounding setbacks but emerged at the end of it as a pioneering campaigner in partnership with one of the most glamorous film stars on the planet.
  • (6) Ray (2004) The late Ray Charles is conjured up in all his playful, lustful, anguished glory in this otherwise stolid, respectful biopic of the legendary musician.
  • (7) To our left sat a stolid middle-aged black couple in the Mad Hatter attire that has become part of the South African football fan's kit.
  • (8) While Lessing's brother, Harry settled into a life of stolid conformity, she rebelled, graduating from a junior school run by nuns who had been out in the sun too long, to a high school which she left when she was 14.
  • (9) 58 min: Holland are looking stolid and unimaginative.
  • (10) 3.36am GMT 56 mins The lack of the overlapping full backs (Scott is no Yedlin) is beginning to make Seattle look a little stolid trying to play through this narrow Portland midfield.
  • (11) One by one, our equivocal hero seeks out the runaways: worldly-wise Zhora (Joanna Cassidy); stolid Leon (Brion James); the “pleasure-model” Pris ( Daryl Hannah ); and the group’s apparent leader, the ultimate Nietzschean blond beast, Roy Batty (the wonderful Rutger Hauer).
  • (12) The Guardian Review book club boasts a distinguished history of literary guests, but only Lessing achieved the distinction of a spontaneous standing ovation upon entering the room, a tiny figure dressed entirely in black, stolid as a carved deity.
  • (13) But Rjukan itself, until then, was stolidly unimpressed.
  • (14) When he comes back from the effects of a heart attack in his garden, it is with inner sensation – "an audible pop in the ears" – and a kind of self-spectatorship: "a rich consciousness of solitude, and a feeling of love and admiration for this big stolid body I was in".
  • (15) Led by the passionate Charles Parnell , and then by the stolid John Redmond , the Irish Parliamentary party’s obstructionism and filibusters won many reforms for Ireland.
  • (16) One kind morning I got myself to a meeting with a marvellous occupational therapist, Nicky deCourcy, who stolidly laid out a few facts, among them the detail that I wouldn't be able to cope for a while with more than two extraneous interventions – quiet TV plus reading, say, or radio plus writing – and that sudden urgent sounds would send me, in the medical terminology, a bit wacko.
  • (17) Now, Germans practise the stolid virtues of thrift and moderation we once thought our own, while the British, who once abhorred debt, have become a nation of maniacal spendthrifts.
  • (18) Orwell never explains why the stolid old Anglo-Saxon should be any more "clear" than such newfangled horrors; as "predict" and "extraneous" demonstrate now, words minted from the classical will very rapidly seem entirely normal.
  • (19) I was convinced that, for all its Thatcherite ugliness and excess, there was something about the UK's gritty liveliness that would leave the stolid Germans behind.
  • (20) By allowing TV cameras to broadcast the coronation at Westminster Abbey live to millions of her citizens the Queen transformed a stolid state ceremony into a national celebration.