Crossword clues for stiffness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stiffness \Stiff"ness\, n. The quality or state of being stiff; as, the stiffness of cloth or of paste; stiffness of manner; stiffness of character.
The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too.
--South.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., from stiff (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "uneasy formality" is from 1630s.
Wiktionary
n. 1 rigidity or a measure of rigidity. 2 inflexibility or a measure of inflexibility. 3 inelegance, lacking relaxedness. 4 muscular tension due to unaccustomed or excessive exercise or work
WordNet
n. the physical property of being inflexible and hard to bend
the property of moving with pain or difficulty; "he awoke with a painful stiffness in his neck"
the inelegance of someone stiff and unrelaxed (as by embarrassment) [syn: awkwardness, clumsiness, gracelessness]
excessive sternness; "severity of character"; "the harshness of his punishment was inhuman"; "the rigors of boot camp" [syn: severity, harshness, rigor, rigour, inclemency, hardness]
Wikipedia
Stiffness is the rigidity of an object — the extent to which it resists deformation in response to an applied force.
The complementary concept is flexibility or pliability: the more flexible an object is, the less stiff it is.
Usage examples of "stiffness".
In the trachea, bronchi, and larger bronchial tubes, the stiffness is supplied by rings of cartilage, while in the smaller tubes this is replaced by connective and muscular tissue.
Doping them with compounds like tantalum carbide makes them into submicron-sized superconducting wires, and packing them with potassium-doped buckyballs achieves the same effect, and if the buckytube is sized properly to fit the buckyball such packing would probably also serve to increase their already phenomenal stiffness and boost their compressive strength as well.
Lo Manto asked, standing now, arching his back, cracking the stiffness out of the muscles.
She never mentioned turpentine or masticke, or a drop of wax, or resin to give the whole a stiffness, or the quantities.
Difficulty of swallowing, soreness, and stiffness of the throat, are the first monitions of its approach.
At least she and Prez were slow-dancing, working a little more of the stiffness out.
Vera, who had dreaded a protocolaire stiffness, so that one can neither stay sober nor dare to get drunk, is now hoping that her hook-and-eye will stand the strain, made for a narrower waist than hers.
He sat with a posture of prim stiffness as though repeated maternal advice in his younger years concerning the desirability of good posture had rigidified his spine forever.
And whatever language they spoke, they spoke it idiomatically, even slangily, with none of the stiffness and awkwardness with which human beings speak a new language which they have recently acquired.
Cartilaginous tissue forms smooth coverings over the ends of the bones and, in addition to this, supplies the necessary stiffness in organs like the larynx and the ear.
The intercellular material, in addition to connecting the cells, supplies to certain tissues important properties, such as the elasticity of cartilage and the stiffness of the bones.
Then he turned away again, and Doodlebug watched him straighten his neck and torso to their habitual lacquered stiffness before he opened the doors of the library.
Prew grinned, feeling the stiffness soften as he looked at the furious narrowshouldered little Wop.
There were yet two minutes, and I employed it in hobbling up and down to try and relieve my stiffness, and in inspecting the condition of the horses.
As he stood up, his knees afflicted with a strange, rheumatoid stiffness, he knew this replay was going to end early, far short of the LZ.