Lenient vs Stern - What's the difference?
lenient | stern |
Lax; tolerant of deviation; permissive; not strict.
* 1847 , , (Jane Eyre), Chapter XVIII
Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
* (John Dryden)
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=76, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Grim and forbidding in appearance.
* (William Wordsworth)
(nautical) The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel.
* , chapter=7
, title= (figurative) The post of management or direction.
* (William Shakespeare)
The hinder part of anything.
The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.
(l) (luminous dot appearing in the night sky)
As nouns the difference between lenient and stern
is that lenient is (medicine) a lenitive; an emollient while stern is a star; a small luminous dot that can be seen on the night sky.As an adjective lenient
is lax; tolerant of deviation; permissive; not strict.lenient
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The standard is fairly lenient , so use your discretion.
- But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master; I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character; to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad.
Synonyms
* lax, permissiveAntonyms
* strict * severe * stringentExternal links
* * * ----stern
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) stern, sterne, sturne, from (etyl) .Adjective
(er)- stern as tutors, and as uncles hard
Snakes and ladders, passage=Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins.}}
- these barren rocks, your stern inheritance
Etymology 2
Most likely from (etyl) , from the same Germanic root.Noun
(wikipedia stern) (en noun)Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=Old Applegate, in the stern', just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the ' stern .}}
- and sit chiefest stern of public weal
- (Spenser)
