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sternness

Other forms: sternnesses

Definitions of sternness
  1. noun
    uncompromising resolution
    synonyms: strictness
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    types:
    Puritanism
    strictness and austerity in conduct and religion
    type of:
    restrictiveness, unpermissiveness
    a lack of permissiveness or indulgence and a tendency to confine behavior within certain specified limits
  2. noun
    the quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding
    “the sternness of his surroundings made him uncomfortable”
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