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Stiffness   /stˈɪfnəs/   Listen
Stiffness

noun
1.
The physical property of being inflexible and hard to bend.
2.
The property of moving with pain or difficulty.
3.
Firm resoluteness in purpose or opinion or action.
4.
The inelegance of someone stiff and unrelaxed (as by embarrassment).  Synonyms: awkwardness, clumsiness, gracelessness.
5.
Excessive sternness.  Synonyms: hardness, harshness, inclemency, rigor, rigorousness, rigour, rigourousness, severeness, severity.  "The harshness of his punishment was inhuman" , "The rigors of boot camp"






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"Stiffness" Quotes from Famous Books



... have seen her safe under the reawakening influence of an old, only half-forgotten friendship; and Nicholson, too, felt dimly that a cunning and none too scrupulous hand had shattered a secret hope that he had cherished from his first year in India. Altogether, there was a stiffness between them which the world was quick to recognize without understanding. But Beatrice had made her observations, and, as it has been said, had come to a definite conclusion. Her interest in Lois was now thoroughly aroused, and the vision of ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... Lavendar," the Captain said, with sudden stiffness; "he's like all the rest of 'em. I'll get a license in Upper Chester, and we'll ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... it on the lips of Socrates, and virtue in the life of Phocion. It is well known that the Romans had to exhaust their energies in civil wars, and, corrupted by Oriental luxury, to bow their heads under the yoke of a fortunate despot, before Grecian art triumphed over the stiffness of their character. The same was the case with the Arabs: civilization only dawned upon them when the vigor of their military spirit became softened under the sceptre of the Abbassides. Art did not appear in modern Italy till the glorious Lombard League was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... was allowed to remain on board the corvette. He kept likewise that worthy, Tacon, as he felt sure that if he did not he should never seen him again. Colonel Armytage behaved much more courteously to Ronald than he had formerly done, but still there was more stiffness in his manner than was pleasant; and in his presence his wife and daughter appeared restrained and uneasy, as if he had laid injunctions on them which they would ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... pleased." Possibly Mrs. Carstairs had noted the stiffness of his speech, and in her languid way desired to soothe his feelings. "I forget if you have seen my little daughter. I must introduce you to her—and——" she turned to the young girl who stood by and laid a hand on her arm—"to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... bearings with paraffin, and let the machine dry without oiling it again. The consequence was that they became heated to a considerable temperature and jammed. Even at the outset the machine ran stiffly as well as noisily, and I, being inclined to ascribe this stiffness to my own lassitude, merely ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... inhabitant may lose his way within a stone's-throw of his house, or be obliged to follow the beach for a guide. The brick house attached to the light-house was exceedingly damp at that season, and writing-paper lost all its stiffness in it. It was impossible to dry your towel after bathing, or to press flowers without their mildewing. The air was so moist that we rarely wished to drink, though we could at all times taste the salt on our lips. Salt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... their object. Two dangers, they tell us, have to be avoided. In compiling a Liturgy from Ancient Sources, one danger will be that of "too much stiffness in refusing" new matter—i.e. letting a love of permanence spoil progress: another, and opposite danger, will be "too much easiness in admitting" any variation—i.e. letting a love of progress spoil permanence. They will try to ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... with much grace and consideration. The little Weber uttered a shout of indignation on seeing his mother rise from her chair, and all this noise and confusion soon changed the previous stiffness and restraint into laughs and gayety. The waiters went round and round the table executing marvellous feats, serving twenty persons from one duck so adroitly carved and served that each one had as much as he wanted. And the peas fell like hail on the plates; and the beans—prepared ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... dawn ushered in a clearing sky. Ragged wisps of clouds chased each other across the blue when they set out again. Hazel walked the stiffness out of her muscles before she mounted. When she did get on Silk, Roaring Bill increased his pace. He was long-legged and light of foot, apparently tireless. She asked no questions. What was the use? He would eventually come out somewhere. She was resigned ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... one of ourselves, of course, Sholto. But I believe you delight in stiffness and ceremony. Will you not ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... after telling the Colonel and (p. 258) other officers to keep in the background, I would go over in front of the battalion and tell them that the Colonel had handed the parade over to me, and that they were to break ranks and sit on the ground as close as possible. At once military stiffness was dispelled, and amid much laughter the men would crowd around and squat on the ground tightly packed together. Imagine what a picture that was. Splendid stalwart young men they were, hundreds and hundreds of them, with healthy merry faces, and behind them in the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... few moments they talked on together, then she rose to clear the table. His eyes followed her in all her movements, for, in spite of her bruised stiffness, all that she did was done so deftly, and every movement of her beautiful form was full of the grace of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... If stiffness of the neck, headache or similar pains are felt after its use, the moist linen should not be extended to the back part of the neck but only the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... acquired a touch of rheumatism from wasting time at the close of his match instead of getting his shower while still warm. That slight stiffness the next day may mean defeat. A serious chill may mean severe illness. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... him. The dim outline of her in her filmy dress and the elusive scent of her presence stirred him again. Her voice was gentle as she laughed a greeting and she gave his hand an imperceptible squeeze as he came up the steps. His stiffness vanished, but the sound of voices from back in the shadow disturbed him. An absurd personality crowded to his lips as she led him forward, but ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... of the keyboard. A few great players practice this at a public recital, and lo! and behold! a veritable cult of 'wrist-droppers' arises and we see students raising and lowering the wrist with exaggerated mechanical stiffness and entirely ignoring the important end in which this wrist dropping was only ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... dimly burning. There was the usual lodging-house furniture, and on a faded red sofa near the fire old Mrs. Warlock was lying. Maggie could not see her very clearly in the half-light, but there was something about her immobility and the stiffness of her head (decorated as of old with its frilly white cap) that reminded one of a figure made out of wax. Maggie turned to find Amy ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... Scotch cap of some bright colour, and call it 'berretta.' The women tie a gaudy handkerchief round their heads, and compel one corner to stand forward from behind the ear in a triangle, in proportion to the size and stiffness whereof the lady seems to think herself well dressed. But the pretty Basque handkerchief will soon give place to the Parisian bonnet. For every cove among the rocks is now filled with smart bathing-houses, from ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... his power. And while for the first years he had drifted, he was always aware of his power. Knew that he had only to rise to assume gigantic stature. And then, just because he was very stiff, and the pain of stiffness and stretching made him uncouth, he grew angry. He resented his captivity, chafed at his being limited like that, did not understand how it had come about. It had come about through love, through sheer sheltering love. She had placed a crystal cup above him to keep him safe, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... peculiar to himself as his handwriting; and indeed I seem to see in the handwriting of Edmond de Goncourt just the characteristics of his style. Every letter is formed carefully, separately, with a certain elegant stiffness; it is beautiful, formal, too regular in the 'continual slight novelty' of its form to be quite clear at a glance: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... of the spavined limb, the moment the heel of the foot touches the ground, something after the manner of string-halt. At times the stiffness can be observed only when the animal is pushed from one side of the stall to the other. Spavin may often be detected when riding a horse down a steep hill from the fact ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... When she had satisfied the latter's curiosity she led the conversation by a straight path to the sufferings of the children of Austria and begged them to join her in forming a relief committee. They received this philanthropic suggestion with no apparent fervor, but it served to relieve the stiffness and tension until they retired to the drawing-room ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... and slight, youthfully undeveloped, yet with the grace of personal symmetry, high breeding, and military training, upright without stiffness, with a command and dexterity of movement which prevented the sword and spurs from being the annoyance to his pew-mates that country awkwardness usually made these appendages. The spurs were on cavalry boots, guarding the knee, and met by white buckskins, both so little dusty that there could ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Whitefoot, which turned with an air of immense relief into the corral gate and the hay piled at the further end. Buddy gave him one preoccupied glance and started for the cabin, walking with the cowpuncher's peculiar, bowlegged gait which comes of wearing chaps and throwing out the knees to overcome the stiffness of the leather. At thirteen Buddy was a cowboy from hat-crown to spurs-and at thirteen Buddy gloried in the fact. To-day, however, his mind was weighted with matters of more ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... table writing incessantly, conversing, pen in hand, with his Augusta and all the family in Cassel. Better that this good man should carry off his stuff than those other domineering officers with cutting voices and insolent stiffness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... They are of the time of the third Amenophis, and were discovered at Mount Barkal by Lord Prudhoe, in 1829. As specimens of the mechanical skill of ancient Egyptian sculptors, they are worth particular remark. Here there is little of that angular stiffness characteristic of the statues the visitor has already examined. And now, making one more progress through the saloon, the visitor may rapidly notice the varieties of strange animal forms—all of which, in ancient Egypt, had their religious meaning. They were, at all events, symbols ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... analysed, but the element of stricken silence. This element indeed affected Strether as charged with audible rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of taking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace. He wouldn't appeal too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he wouldn't be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth of a perception or the despair of one; and at times and in places—where the low-browed galleries were darkest, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... Against this tendency to the hard presentment of mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles; each great system of sculpture resisting it in its own way, etherealising, spiritualising, relieving its stiffness, its heaviness, and death. The use of colour in sculpture is but an unskilful contrivance to effect, by borrowing from another art, what the nobler sculpture effects by ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... bushy and well-arched eyebrows,—a nose finely moulded, and a small mouth. His features are distinguished from those of his race by a peculiar fairness of complexion and delicacy of skin: the elegant form of his hands and feet is not less remarkable. The apparent stiffness of his arms, when he walks, is a sign of his stern and impenetrable character. His address is thoroughly noble and dignified. Of himself he is completely master; and he exerts a tacit supremacy over all who approach him. An immovable stony calmness, which never forsakes him, even in moments ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... had brought him, and enjoying prosperous circumstances, Richardson's life closed in a sort of perpetual tea-party, in which he, the only male, sat surrounded by bevies of adoring ladies. He died in London, of apoplexy, on July 4, 1761. His manners were marked by the same ceremonious stiffness which gives his writing an air of belonging to a far earlier period than that of Fielding or Smollett; but his gravity and sentimental earnestness only helped to endear him to the women. Of the style of Richardson there is little to be said; the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... dame had the same objection to starch as the more "ancient" one, is not recorded, but in any case she was not alone. Men and women alike, forswore the desired stiffness, retaining it only in their opinions. By the time that Anne Bradstreet had settled in Andover, bodily indulgence so far as adornment or the gratification of appetite went, had become a matter for courts to decide upon. Whether Simon Bradstreet gave up the curling locks which, while not ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... holds me as in a 'vice' screwed up and secured by a giant. (Please observe that there's a pun in that last sentence.) Where the conventionalities of society compel me to attidunize my appearance and customs into the stiffness of gentility, I puff the Havana; but when the privacy of my own room or the solitude of the roads and fields permit me to vulgarize to my liking, I thrust a ball of 'Mrs. MILLER'S fine-cut,' or a fragment of the 'natural ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... step-tag, too," said Old Hundred. "Remember that? The boy or girl who was It shut his eyes and counted ten. Then he opened his eyes suddenly, and if he saw any part of you moving you became It. On 'ten' you tried to freeze into stiffness. We must have struck some ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... quite right of her. Dear Magdalen, I am so glad," said Mrs. Best, crossing over to kiss her; for the first stiffness had worn off, and they were together again, as had been the solicitor's daughter and the chemist's daughter, who went to the same school till Magdalen had been sent away to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... one-quarter of an inch in width and of the depth shown in the drawing. Two such discs should be made and, when all cut out, should be given several coats of shellac to add stiffness and to improve ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... something more than happiness; there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accustomed to fill every seat of ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... friends produce several instances, and some while he was secretary of state to King William. His outward regularity of life, his appearance of religion, and seeming zeal for the Church, as they are an effect, so they are the excuse for that stiffness and formality with which his nature[39] is fraught. His adust complexion disposeth him to rigour[40] and severity, which his admirers palliate with the name of zeal. No man had ever a sincerer countenance, or more truly representing his mind and manners. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... to my feet and ascended the companion stairs. Fair weather was over, and there was nothing left but to return to the galley. My left arm was numb, as though paralysed, and days passed before I could use it, while weeks went by before the last stiffness and pain went out of it. And he had done nothing but put his hand upon my arm and squeeze. There had been no wrenching or jerking. He had just closed his hand with a steady pressure. What he might have done I did not fully realize till next day, when he put his head into ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... groom had thrown off twenty years, Vance was not a whit behind. Since their last meeting he had sacrificed his brown moustache to the frost, and his smooth face, smitten with health and vigor, looked uncommonly boyish; and yet, withal, the naked upper lip advertised a stiffness and resolution hitherto concealed. Furthermore, his features portrayed a growth, and his eyes, which had been softly firm, were now firm with the added harshness or hardness which is bred of coping with things and coping quickly,—the stamp of executiveness which is pressed upon men who ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... little stiffness at first; but Mrs. Bodine, with her fine tact, soon began to banish this, and the old lady was pleased that Ella seconded her efforts so readily. Bodine was a man and a straightforward soldier, honest in his views and actions, however mistaken they might be. He had not ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... was taken off, and in a moment I put my head down to my very knees. What a comfort it was! Then I tossed it up and down several times to get the aching stiffness out ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... stiffness of which a young back is capable. She saw an old grey-haired priest, with a round face and a pair of chubby hands, which he constantly held crossed or clasped upon his breast. His long irregular-mouth seemed to fold over at the corners above ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... minister to such communities a simple matter. Amidst the overthrow of all the usual criteria of conduct, the fading out of the usual dividing lines and the blending into one another of the usual divisions, it requires a tactful and prudent man "to keep the happy mean between too much stiffness in refusing and to much easiness in admitting" variations from conventional standards. His point of view, if he is to have any influence whatever, must not exclude the point of view of the great majority; he must accept the situation in order ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a deep immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold of the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a stranger of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He would have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but he enjoyed quite ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James

... were about his neck—I felt no stiffness nor soreness now. He folded me to his breast, and cried, as I did. After a long ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... eyes glared with a restless, dissatisfied look, and were so dark and so fierce and bright that one could hardly see any other details of his face, unless it were his smooth chin, which, either from habit or from the stiffness of his stock, he carried strangely up in ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... and stitches of its own; and then wore the whole thing as it had never been intended to be worn; until this cast-off poetic apparel, stretched on the freer moral limbs of natural folk, faded and stained by weather and earth into new and richer tints, had lost all its original fashionable stiffness, and crudeness of colour, and niminy-piminy fit, and had acquired instead I know not what grace of unexpectedness, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... all that he had copied from the English gentry, his manners, his dress, his curled whiskers, his outward distinction; the woman, with her grand manners, her supreme elegance, all the stiffness and formality of the upper middle class, represented admirably the pride of money. Their disdainful politeness, their haughty amiability, seemed to come down to people. There was a kind of insolence which was visible in their tastes even. M. Bourjot had neither ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... 'made strong,' might be translated 'made pliable,' or 'flexible' conveying the notion of deftness and dexterity rather than that of simple strength. It is practised strength that He will give, the educated hand and arm, masters of the manipulation of the weapon. The stiffness and clumsiness of our handling, the obstinate rigidity as well as the throbbing feebleness of our arms, the dimness of our sight, may all be overcome. At His touch the raw recruit is as the disciplined veteran; the prophet who cannot speak because he is a child, gifted with a mouth and wisdom which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... his canoe on the rather marshy bank to the north of the buildings; then having lifted it out of the water, he stood to his full height and stretched himself, for he had been travelling in the canoe eleven days and was conscious of body stiffness owing to the cramped position he had so ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... noticed, without, however, its having attracted more than a passing look; now I regarded it with more attention. It was one of those portraits of the middle of the eighteenth century, in which artists endeavoured to conquer the stiffness of hoops and brocades; by throwing a fancy drapery around the figure, with loose folds like a mantle or dressing gown, the stays, however, being retained, and the bosom displayed in a manner which shows that our mothers, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... course we did make plans, for all her stiffness. We sat in the red cedar grove, playing at tea-parties with a beautiful china tea-set, and Master Dick was to marry her, and I was to live with them and be nurse to the children, with ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... "confusion," "stiffness," "scattered quantity," etc., all lead in to the root, unbalance, and ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... was bruised on the ankle about two years ago. This is now producing an enlargement of the bone and stiffness ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... saved, since the days of the Rache assault two months earlier. Thanks to supremely clever surgery and to tender care, the dog was little the worse for his wounds. His hearing gradually had come back. In one shoulder he had a very slight stiffness which was not a limp, and a new-healed furrow scarred the left side of his tawny coat. Otherwise he ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... suppers. All Spanish America discovers that only in the U. States, of all the continent, is safe investment; and money gravitates therefore to New York. The Southern naphtha, too, comes in as an ingredient, and lubricates manners and tastes to that degree, that Boston is hated for stiffness, and excellence in luxury is rapidly attained. Of course, dining, dancing, equipaging, etc. are the exclusive beatitudes,—and Thackeray will not cure us of this distemper. Have you a physician that can? Are you a physician, and will ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... paper. Mrs Milburn had somewhat objected to the evening paper in the drawing-room. "Won't you look at a magazine, Octavius?" she said; but Mr Milburn advanced the argument that it removed "any appearance of stiffness," and prevailed. It was impossible to imagine a group more disengaged from the absurd fuss that precedes a party among some classes of people; indeed, when Mr Lorne Murchison arrived—like the unfortunate ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... diarrhea, and that when this was checked by a change of diet, from Indian corn-bread baked with the husk, to boiled rice, the dropsy appeared. The severe pains and livid patches were frequently associated with swellings in various parts, and especially in the lower extremities, accompanied with stiffness and contractions of the knee joints and ankles, and often with a brawny feel of the parts, as if lymph had been effused between the integuments and apeneuroses, preventing the motion of the skin over the swollen parts. Many of the prisoners believed that the scurvy was contagious, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... together with many of the semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month. But it was also evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day. At the close, most of the sellers, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... to see that you are not looking very well," he said at last, with supreme stiffness, and with that peculiarly unconciliating air which an Englishman is apt to put on, when he is languishing ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... observed that the discoloration was beginning to fade. First it vanished from the extremities, then from the larger limbs, and lastly from the trunk. Then in turn came the third stage of relaxation, the second stage of stiffness or rigor, and the first stage of after-death collapse. When all these had rapidly succeeded each ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... the Mehudins' there was a touch of tutorial stiffness in his gentle demeanour. He was pleased with the old house in the Rue Pirouette. On the ground floor he passed through the faint odours pervading the premises of the purveyor of cooked vegetables. Big ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... wheeled and with a military stiffness marched back. Slowly she nodded her head. "I gives ye thet pledge too;" she said, "since ye wants hit—but I gives hit with a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... upon their flank, and beat down their lances with their swords. The only defense of these horsemen-at-arms are their lances; they have nothing else that they can use to protect themselves, or annoy their enemy, on account of the weight and stiffness of their armor, with which they are, as it were, built up. He himself, with two cohorts, made to the mountain, the soldiers briskly following, when they saw him in arms afoot first toiling and climbing up. Being on the top and standing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... in a rustic, a certain pretension to knowing something about the world. In the man who was talking to you I recognized a Parisian, because he had an English air; and while he affected stiffness, he showed perfect ease ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Bradley advocated the continuous cultivation of the ground with different kinds of crops, 'for I find', he said, 'by experience that if such crops are sown as are full of fibrous roots, such roots greatly help to open the parts of grounds inclining to too much stiffness.'[422] ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... Yesterday every tooth on the right side of my head was absolutely waltzing. I would have drawn by the half dozen, but country dentists are not to be lippened to.[238] To-day all is quiet, but a little swelling and stiffness in the jaw. Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling—much like drawing a tooth; they are wanted and will never be better, but I am avaricious of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... spite of the opposition he met with from the master, who said it was foolishness, Harry Paul plunged overboard, and swam to the bathing-place, where he dressed; and, saving that he was suffering from a peculiar sensation of stiffness, he was not much ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn

... his Chancellor Eldon, to the Duke of Wellington, to Lord Liverpool, to Sir William Knighton, keeper of the privy purse, and others, show great cordiality, frankness, and the utter absence of the stiffness and pride incident to his high rank. They abound in expressions of kindness and even affection, whether sincere or not. They are all well written, and would do credit, from a literary point of view, to any private person. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... alone in darkness with my wounds and misery. My cloak had been put into the cell beside my couch, and this I now drew over me, and I lay and thought upon my condition and my prospects, which, as may be seen, were not cheering. I did not suffer great pain from my wounds—only a stiffness that troubled me not at all if I lay still. After an hour or so passed—for it is hard to keep count of time when one's thoughts are the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... first splendour of their coming faded—faded imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and lacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from London told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from a slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied time. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old times he found a rust-eaten spade, and with this he made a fitful attack ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... nevertheless, a contrivance for bearing the domestic cares of home about with you whithersoever you go; and immediately you have to set about producing your own bread and cheese. However, Fanny took most of this trouble off our hands, though there was inevitably the stiffness and discomfort of a new housekeeping on the first day of our arrival; besides that, it was cool, and the wind whistled and grumbled and eddied into the chinks of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... union between the Spanish monarchy and the Catholics of England. Philip was solicitous to gain over the different parties and classes of England: for he had been told that England was a popular monarchy. He belied his Spanish gravity and showed himself, despite the stiffness that was his natural characteristic, affable to every man: he tried to make the impression, and successfully, that he desired the prosperity of England. One of the chief resources of the time, that of securing the most considerable persons by means of pensions, he made use ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... and white in her chair, as on a decision to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with a small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. "It would be the worst," she finally let herself say. "I mean the ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... stiffly precise everything was here! How many backs bowed low, how softly bombastic, high-sounding words were murmured! It seemed as if every free, warm impulse would lapse into stiffness and coldness; moreover, those assembled here were not the poor petitioners of other antechambers, but lords and ladies who belonged to the most illustrious and aristocratic families, while among the waiting ecclesiastics ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... success in improving the taste and judgment of its contemporaries. The poems of West, indeed, had the merit of chaste and manly diction; but they were cold, and, if I may so express it, only dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's there is a stiffness, which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek. Whatever relation, therefore, of cause or impulse Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the most popular poems of the present day; yet in a more sustained and elevated style, of the then living poets, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... boundary lines or at buildings, the taller ones should be used at the back, but the semi-tall ones—say three feet in height—should occasionally be brought well toward the front in order to avoid stiffness and to add irregularity to the general effect. If a house or fence is at the back, flowering vines like the Clematis paniculata, or C. flammula, or any annual flowering vine, may be used here and there. In detached beds which may ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan

... "the Grind" was usually over a known line of country, marked out with flags by the gentleman (familiarly known as Anniseed) who attended to this business, and full of leaps of various kinds, and various degrees of stiffness. By sweepstakes and subscriptions, a sum of from ten to fifteen pounds was raised for the purchase of a silver cup, wherewith to grace the winner's wines and breakfast parties; but, as the winner ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... and they veil their heads, and ungird their garments, and cast stones, as ordered, behind their footsteps. The stones (who could have believed it, but that antiquity is a witness {of the thing?}) began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness, and by degrees to become soft; and when softened, to assume a {new} form. Presently after, when they were grown larger, a milder nature, too, was conferred on them, so that some shape of man might be seen {in them}, yet though but imperfect; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... This is not because his tone is bookish; on the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men cannot pardon ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... a bishop a model prelate because he has no stiffness or ceremony about him, but talks frankly to everybody, and puts all who ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... composition is prepared as follows:—Nitro-glycerine is thickened with pyroxyline to the consistency of raw rubber. This is done by employing about 75 to 85 per cent. of nitro-glycerine, and 15 to 25 per cent. of pyroxyline, according to the stiffness or elasticity of the compound desired. Some solvent that dissolves the nitro-cotton is also used. The product thus formed is a kind of blasting gelatine, and should be in a pasty condition, in order that it may be mixed with fulminate of mercury. ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... for instance, a track traversing the calf, will more or less tie the whole thickness of the structures perforated at one spot, and the apertures of entry and exit may be visibly retracted when the muscles are put in action with consequent pain and stiffness to the patient. Such pain and stiffness form some of the most troublesome after-consequences of many simple wounds. It is remarkable for how long a period after the healing of the wound and resumption of active duty the patients suffer from pain in ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... the manner born—and fight too. But here there was a difference. Jack could affiliate with the natives, yet could never be just like them. The stamp of the foreigner, of the Englishman, was never wholly eradicated. He retained a certain dignity, a reserve, almost a stiffness, in his manner which made him a marked man among them, and would have made him a butt to the wits and bullies among his comrades but for his pride and deadly power. To be mocked as a foreigner, a gringo, an inferior ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... is," replied his governess—"the blossom of an airy-looking and beautiful creeper; but the name also belongs to a family of trees. The white cedar, or cypress, is a very graceful tree which generally grows in swamps. 'It is entirely free from the stiffness of the pines, and to the spiry top of the poplar it unites the airy lightness of the hemlock. The trunk is straight and tall, tapering very gradually, and toward the top there are short irregular branches, forming a small but beautiful head, above which the leading shoot waves ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... hands, as if better to meet together the rude shock of the moment; and seated side by side on the rustic bench which adorned the small veranda of the Tuttle homestead, they gazed helplessly at the speaker. Slowly and with the stiffness of age Jacob sat down on the steps below them and looked up at their startled faces with a twinkle in his dim old eyes. His enjoyment of ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... Wilkinson's school, without discovering that the spirit of honor and confidence was generally high among the young gentlemen, and, consequently, having promised to be friendly to Ferrers, each individual, in duty bound, did his utmost to fulfil that promise, and in a little while the stiffness attendant on the effort wore off, and Ferrers was, in appearance, in precisely the same position as before, to the great satisfaction of the doctor, who was much pleased with his pupils' conduct ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... sure—what can you be sure of?—but I could see why Lena thought she would. She was a little unhealthy thing, dark and sallow and sulky, with thin lips that showed a lack of temperament, and she had a stiffness and preciseness, like a Board School teacher—just that touch of "commonness" which Lena relied on to put him off. She wore a shabby brown skirt and a yellowish blouse. Her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... her to the ground, swung off and passed her, running to the pitifully still little figure of Mother Douglas lying in the pathway, her checked apron flapping, its starchy stiffness showing limp dark spots where ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... but there was a stiffness about his lips, and a cold, whimsical light in his eyes, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... he, "here is something to be thankful for, at least," and so saying and shaking the stiffness out of his knees and elbows, he started off for the white walls and the red roofs in ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... gave the impression of being? Audrey considered that all was lost, and she was aware of a most unpleasant feeling of helplessness and inefficiency. Then she seemed to receive inspiration and optimism from somewhere. She knew not exactly from where, but perhaps it was from the shy stiffness of the demeanour of her old acquaintance, Inspector Keeble. Moreover, the Irishman's twinkling eyes were ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... is nothing but concrete. At 500 lb. per sq. in., this force would require an area of 32 sq. in. Will some advocate of this type of design please state where this area can be found? It must, of necessity, be in contact with the rod, and, for structural reasons, because of the lack of stiffness in the rod, it would have to be close to the point of bend. If analogy to the queen-post fails so completely, because of the almost complete absence of the post, why should not this borrowed ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... bountiful supper, and the presence of the young people robbed it of all possible stiffness. Aunt Jane helped clear the table and put away the food, while Miranda entertained in the parlor; but Rebecca and the infant Burches washed the dishes and held high carnival in the kitchen, doing only trifling damage—breaking a cup and plate that had been cracked ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... it all very pleasant," the other said. "Hunter is a splendid fellow, and is adored by his men. His staff are all comparatively young men, with none of the stiffness of the British staff officer about them. We are all young—there is scarcely a man with the rank of captain in the British Army out here. We are all majors or colonels in the Egyptian Army, but most of us are subalterns in our own regiments. It is good training for us. At ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... his attentions. If she had been under contrary orders, there would have been some excitement in going as far as she durst, but the only effect on her was embarrassment, and she treated Antony with the same shy stiffness she had shown to Humfrey, during the earlier part of his residence at home. Besides, she clung more and more to her adopted father, who, now that they were away from home and he was about to part with her, treated her with a tender, chivalrous ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... did not recover so soon as Urquhart's sanguineness had predicted. Perhaps he began taking precautions against stiffness too soon; anyhow he did not that term make a decent three-quarter, or any sort of a three-quarter at all. It always took Peter a long time to get well of things; he was easy to break and hard to mend—made in Germany, as he was frequently told. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... intellectuality, and his dry, mummy-like tenacity of purpose, with a dash now and then of biting sarcastic humour, we see the remains of a great and noble nature, out of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by accumulated injuries. With as much elasticity of mind as stiffness of neck, every step he takes but the last is as firm as the earth he treads upon. Nothing can daunt, nothing disconcert him; remonstrance cannot move, ridicule cannot touch, obloquy cannot exasperate him: when he has not provoked them, he has been forced to bear them; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... tapers very gradually, and forms a charming finish to one of the finest tombs to be seen anywhere. Trefoil-headed arches are used throughout the design, but with such consummate skill that no feeling of sameness is aroused. Of straight lines there are many, but of stiffness there is none. Formerly the whole work was painted with red, green, and gold, traces of which are to be seen on the side next to the choir and underneath ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... Rosy was greatly impressed by the superiority of his bearing, that he could make her blush with embarrassment when he conveyed to her that she had made a mistake, that he could chill her miserably when he chose to assume a lofty stiffness. A man's domestic armoury was filled with weapons if he could make a woman feel gauche, inexperienced, in the wrong. When he was safely married, he could pave the way to what he felt was the only practical ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of our client, Mr. Carless," observed Methley, with some stiffness of manner, "there is no need for such ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... his face, and those who knew him laughed at the jest, for they always seemed hard to find when one wished to meet them. His shoulders were unusually high and narrow, but he did not stoop. On the contrary, he habitually threw back his head, with a certain coldly aggressive stiffness, so that he easily looked above the person with whom he was talking. Though he had never been given to any sort of bodily exercise, his hands were naturally horny, and they were almost always cold. For the rest, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... function of supporting the mechanically weak active material and of conducting the current. It is made of a lead antimony alloy which is melted and poured into a mould. Pure lead is too soft and too easily attacked by the electrolyte, and antimony is added to give stiffness, and resistance to the action of the electrolyte in the cell. The amount of antimony used varies in different makes but probably averages ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... dropped like drooping lilies for one brief moment in the midst of their silken stiffness, skirts that "stood alone," and made their courtesies to their swains ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... who are tormented by sexual excitement. They tell one stories of long-continued local excitement, followed by intense muscular weariness, or by severe aching pain in the back and legs. In some I have had complaints of swelling and stiffness in the legs, and of pains in the joints, particularly in the knees;" he gives the case of a man who suffered after prolonged chastity from inflammatory conditions of knees and was only cured by marriage. Pearce Gould, it may be added, finds that "excessive ungratified sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... earnest glance passed between teacher and pupil, then Marjorie felt her hand taken between two small, warm palms. "I am sure Miss Dean and I are going to be friends," said a sweet, reassuring voice that amply made up for Miss Merton's stiffness. "Are you a stranger in Sanford, my dear? I am sure I ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... of it all was that he insisted, as a matter of personal education, on coming to my room after breakfast to watch the expert manoeuvres of Britton in kneading the stiffness out of my muscles. He was looking for new ideas, he explained. I first consulted Britton and then resignedly ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... ill with laughing. This Mr. B—y half convulses me ; yet I cannot make you laugh by writing his speeches, because it is the manner which accompanies them, that, more than the matter, renders them so peculiarly ridiculous. His extreme pomposity, the solemn stiffness of his person, the conceited twinkling of his little old eyes, and the quaint importance of his delivery, are so much more like some pragmatical old coxcomb represented on the stage, than like anything in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... took a light and attended his guest to his room. Asgill and the O'Beirnes—the smaller folk had withdrawn earlier—remained seated at the table, the young men scoffing at the Englishman's weak head, and his stiffness and conceit of himself, Asgill silent and downcast. His scheme for ridding himself of Payton had failed; it remained to face the situation. He did not distrust Flavia; no Englishman, he was sure, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... fresh sheaf of them—up and up twelve or fourteen feet—and expands into a candelabra of golden blossom, and not a droop comes in the plant below. But as the seed forms, we see that life is working death, slowly and surely; the swords lose their stiffness and colour and begin to hang helplessly, and by the time it is ripe, every vestige of vitality is drained away from them, and they have gone to limp, greyish-brown streamers. The seed has possessed itself ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter

... down to the bank and asked him how he did. He straightened himself, grimacing humorously at the stiffness of his ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... had stiffened a little at our approach, as I could see, but a young girl's stiffness is always rather amusing than otherwise, and I did not mind it. Neither, that I could see, did Mr. Glendenning, and it soon passed. It seemed that she had left her mother lying down in her state-room, where she justly imagined that if she did not see the rapids she ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... stronger, the back hairs on Ed's neck were starting to stand up now. Without visible movement, or even noticing himself that he was doing it, he let awareness run over his body, checking the position and stiffness of his legs—he had been sitting there quite a while—the balance of the gun across his knees, the nearness of ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... shape of cards for women is nearly square (about 2 1/2 x 3 inches). A fine dull-finished card-board of medium weight and stiffness is used. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... summons I found him pacing excitedly up and down the central room, while the old soldier who guarded the premises stood with military stiffness in a corner. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to which Simonides brought it the epigram never rose. In him there is complete ease of workmanship and mastery of form together with the noble and severe simplicity which later poetry lost. His dedications retain something of the antique stiffness; but his magnificent epitaphs are among our most precious inheritances from the greatest thought and art ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... these is easy, natural, and often even fascinating. The terms of polite familiarity with which you yourself are regarded, and with which you are encouraged to treat all around you; the absence of every thing like stiffness, or formality; the little interludes of music, in which, either in singing, or in performing on some instrument, most of those you meet are able to take a part; the round games which are often introduced, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... of the guests. Dr. Dastick, for the first and only time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to the bottoms of his boots. Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat. The collar and cuffs of Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with the starch. The clergyman, indeed, wore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... till half-past eight, sir," Reuben said. "I walked about for a bit, after I came out from school, to try and get the stiffness out of my leg, so as to be able to come ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... acquainted with his performance, fill up every idea of excellence in this character: his love was enchanting, his rage alarming, his grief melting: even now, though overtaken by time, and impaired in constitution, he has not the shadow of a competitor. The rheumatic stiffness of his joints has been industriously trumpeted forth, and every mean art made use of to lower him in public opinion; yet true it is that if he hobbled upon stilts, he would be better than many persons, in his style, upon their best legs. A gentleman of acknowledged judgment lately made ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... nearly complete. It gets down to the plane of pure and sparkling idiocy that the world admires in, say, "The Merry Widow." Yet the masque afforded him opportunities of which he made splendid use. The overture is a noble piece of workmanship. There is a Handelian dignity without any bow-wow or stiffness, and the freshness and freedom are of a kind that Handel never attained to. Of course, it has no connection with the drama: it would serve for many another play just as well. What the theatre manager demanded of Purcell was a piece of music to occupy ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... of Blake's unusually long occupancy broke this stiffness in many directions; intimate trifles that speak a man's presence were strewn here and there—objects of utility, objects of value and interest gathered upon his last long journey. Eminently pleasant the salon appeared in the sunshine of the May morning—full of air and light, its gray carpet ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... explanations with a certain stiffness of self-defence. She and Lady Winterbourne had evolved a scheme for reviving and improving the local industry of straw-plaiting, which after years of decay seemed now on the brink of final disappearance. The village women ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that, Toby," the other told him, as he commenced with his customary early morning exercises, modeled somewhat after the type of those in use in the army, and which were best calculated to take all the stiffness and numbness out of his system, brought about by curling ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... helplessly at Meier, and did not know what to say. Genya and Iraida flushed crimson, and bent over their music; they were ashamed of their tactless father. A minute passed in silence, and there was a feeling of unbearable discomfort, when all at once with a sort of painful stiffness and inappropriateness, there sounded in ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... slowly and with seeming reluctance, to return to me; and so exceedingly disagreeable was the process, that if I could have had my own way just then, I think I should have preferred to die. My first sensation was that of excessive stiffness in every part of my body, with distracting headache. Then, as my nerves more fully recovered their functions, ensued a burning fever which scorched my body and sent the blood rushing through my throbbing veins like a torrent of molten metal. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... made her talk about the ridiculous book, and the utterly unimportant furniture—I made her express her opinion about styles, and got out of her that a simple Queen Anne was what she herself preferred.—I knew that she was giving way and talking with less stiffness because she was weak with sorrow, and probably had not had much sleep—I knew that it was not because she had forgotten about the Suzette cheque or really was more friendly. I knew that I was taking an ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the Essay on Homer prefixed to the translation, with which he does not seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the writing ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... of healthy parents—he was their first child—about four weeks too soon. His whole body had something of stiffness and awkwardness. The legs were worse off in this respect than the arms; they showed, as they continued to show up to the time of his death, a tendency to become crossed. The boy was never able to stand ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... his hat. His manner now was no longer inquisitorial. With the closing of his notebook a new geniality had taken the place of his official stiffness. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... better still to have it callendered.—Blue. The calico must be washed clean and dried. Then mix some of Scott's liquid blue in as much water as will be sufficient to cover the things to be dyed, and add some starch to give it a light stiffness. Dry a small piece of the lining to see whether the colour is deep enough; and if approved, put it in and wash it in the dye. Dry the articles singly, and mangle ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... even worse for nations than for individual men Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history) Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction Death within which welcomed a death without Decline to practise hypocrisy Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance Dialectical stiffness Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices Dogs die more decently than we men Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage Effort ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Buren said, when told of his headache, while Frank remarked, "Sick of his bargain, maybe," laughing loudly at his own joke, while the others laughed in unison; and so the dinner passed off without that stiffness which Ethelyn had so ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... water, destroys the original nature of anything whatsoever. Indeed, all that is sprinkled with the breath of its vapour is changed into the hardness of stone. It remains a doubt whether it be more marvellous or more perilous, that soft and flowing water should be invested with such a stiffness, as by a sudden change to transmute into the nature of stone whatsoever is put to it and drenched with its reeking fume, nought but the shape surviving. Here also are said to be other springs, which now are fed with floods of rising ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... from the Highland Railway between Forres and Dunphail, the larches having grown up zig-zag, according as the several winds happened to prevail. It is well known that no regular plantation can in beauty equal a natural one. There is too much stiffness and form, but the man of taste will avoid straight lines, and utilize the undulations of the land, blending the landscape as it ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... Certainly, I am an old friend—a connection also." There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's tone, of which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to hear that Lady Henry has grown so much more helpless since ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Stiffness" :   firmness of purpose, firmness, inelegance, stiff, resolve, inelasticity, resoluteness, strictness, sternness, rusticity, gaucherie, resolution, woodenness



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