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Sternness vs Harshness - What's the difference?

sternness | harshness | Related terms |

Sternness is a related term of harshness.


As nouns the difference between sternness and harshness

is that sternness is (uncountable) the state or quality of being stern while harshness is the quality of being harsh.

sternness

English

Noun

  • (uncountable) The state or quality of being stern.
  • * 2012 , July 15. Richard Williams in Guardian Unlimited, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track
    • There was the sternness of an old-fashioned Tour patron in his rebuke to the young Frenchman Pierre Rolland, the only one to ride away from the peloton and seize the opportunity for a lone attack before being absorbed back into the bunch, where he was received with coolness.
  • (countable) The result or product of being stern.

    • harshness

    English

    Noun

  • The quality of being harsh.
  • *1891 , (Thomas Hardy), (w, Tess of the d'Urbervilles) , Part 6:
  • *:And yet these harshnesses' are tenderness itself when compared with the universal '''harshness''' out of which they grow; the ' harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, of to-day towards yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day.
  • *
  • *:She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realising that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.