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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
rigour
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
intellectual
▪ If you read the writings of Claus Oldenburg you find it has a precision and intellectual rigour.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A lack of rigour in the investigation.
▪ Ferguson has restored the rigour of self-scrutiny to history.
▪ Regretfully I see in him a nature inclined to harshness and rigour, with little tenderness and forthrightness.
▪ The difficulty with many bibliometric studies is their lack of theoretical rigour, as Gilbert and Woolgar have pointed out.
▪ The facade of the building at least escaped from rigour.
▪ This limits the potential rigour of design because the anchor of skill training is the specification of the objectives.
▪ With even greater environmental rigour, harshness itself is a major direct cause of community structure.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
rigour

Rigor \Rig"or\, n. [OE. rigour, OF. rigour, F. rigueur, from L. rigor, fr. rigere to be stiff. See Rigid.] [Written also rigour.]

  1. The becoming stiff or rigid; the state of being rigid; rigidity; stiffness; hardness.

    The rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move.
    --Milton.

  2. (Med.) See 1st Rigor, 2.

  3. Severity of climate or season; inclemency; as, the rigor of the storm; the rigors of winter.

  4. Stiffness of opinion or temper; rugged sternness; hardness; relentless severity; hard-heartedness; cruelty.

    All his rigor is turned to grief and pity.
    --Denham.

    If I shall be condemn'd Upon surmises, . . . I tell you 'T is rigor and not law.
    --Shak.

  5. Exactness without allowance, deviation, or indulgence; strictness; as, the rigor of criticism; to execute a law with rigor; to enforce moral duties with rigor; -- opposed to lenity.

  6. Severity of life; austerity; voluntary submission to pain, abstinence, or mortification.

    The prince lived in this convent with all the rigor and austerity of a capuchin.
    --Addison.

  7. Violence; force; fury. [Obs.]

    Whose raging rigor neither steel nor brass could stay.
    --Spenser.

    Syn: Stiffness; rigidness; inflexibility; severity; austerity; sternness; harshness; strictness; exactness.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
rigour

chiefly British English spelling of rigor (q.v.); for spelling, see -or.

Wiktionary
rigour

n. 1 Severity or strictness. 2 A trembling or shivering response. 3 Character of being unyielding or inflexible. 4 Shrewd questioning. 5 Higher level of difficulty. 6 (context British slang English) (misspelling of rigor English) An abbreviated form of rigour mortis.

WordNet
rigour
  1. n. the quality of being logically valid [syn: cogency, validity, rigor]

  2. something hard to endure; "the asperity of northern winters" [syn: asperity, grimness, hardship, rigor, severity, rigorousness]

  3. excessive sternness; "severity of character"; "the harshness of his punishment was inhuman"; "the rigors of boot camp" [syn: severity, harshness, rigor, inclemency, hardness, stiffness]

Wikipedia
Rigour

Rigour ( BrE) or rigor ( AmE) (see spelling differences) describes a condition of stiffness or strictness. Rigour frequently refers to a process of adhering absolutely to certain constraints, or the practice of maintaining strict consistency with certain predefined parameters. These constraints may be environmentally imposed, such as "the rigours of famine"; logically imposed, such as mathematical proofs which must maintain consistent answers; or socially imposed, such as the process of defining ethics and law.

Usage examples of "rigour".

I beseech you, messeigneurs, to mitigate the rigour of my sentence, and not to drive my soul to despair.

Thinking she was going too far, and such rigour appearing to me as cruel as it was unjust and absurd, I obeyed, but threw the hair on the toilet-table with an air of supreme contempt.

Family and myself have joined lately the resident friends in the Holy Land in contributing towards the relief of the present distress in Germany, and we trust our modest efforts will mitigate to some extent the rigours of this coming winter in that afflicted country.

For anyone living in the Derbyshire Peaks, April brought relief after the rigours of winter.

Their resistance was confirmed by an unwise measure of Grenville, who determined to intrust the execution of his prohibitory orders to military and naval officers, who were disposed to act with rigour.

But his own wretched lot is little improved by the good he accomplishes, and if he manages to survive the rigours of the winter in his scanty apparel, this is to be ascribed mainly and perhaps exclusively to vodka of which he drinks enormous quantities at every posthouse, and without any visible consequences.

Such was the rigour of the season, that some hundreds of the sentinels dropped down dead on their several posts, unable to sustain the severity of the cold.

She knew not how such an offence as hers might be classed by the laws of worldly politeness, to what a degree of unforgivingness it might with propriety lead, nor to what rigours of rudeness in return it might justly make her amenable.

Indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter, in the chink of a ruined wall.

His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.

Thinking she was going too far, and such rigour appearing to me as cruel as it was unjust and absurd, I obeyed, but threw the hair on the toilet-table with an air of supreme contempt.

I accepted the invitation, and Pasean offering me a constant round of pleasures, it was easy enough for me to enjoy myself, and to forget for the time the rigours of the cruel Angela.

The next day, a short while before we left, the broker I had employed in the redemption of the lady's effects, told me that the banker, whom Schwerin had cheated, was going to send an express to Berlin, to enquire whether the king would object to Count Schwerin's being proceeded against with the utmost rigour of the law.

Mr Mottram annotates this theme with some rigour (his book has good bits too), and he does draw haphazard attention to the things that make Burroughs worth looking at: his great scenes of interrogation and manipulation, the desolate evil of his wound-down cities and inert, vicious bureaucracies, that sense of wasted and pre-doomed humanity which animates his best writing.

But the bold child that perill well espying,If he too rashly to his charet drew,Gaue way vnto his horses speedie flying,And their resistlesse rigour did eschew.