stringent

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 4, 2015 is: stringent • \STRIN-junt\  • adjective 1 : tight, constricted 2 : marked by rigor, strictness, or severity 3 : marked by money scarcity and credit strictness Examples: Brandon and Sarah had to adjust to living on a stringent budget during the four months when Brandon was looking for a job. "In an effort to address the perils of climate change, the county supervisors voted 3-2 to adopt the most stringent greenhouse-gas-emission restrictions of any county in California…." - Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara (California) Independent, May 21, 2015 Did you know? Words that are synonymous with stringent include rigid, which implies uncompromising inflexibility ("rigid rules of conduct"), and rigorous, which suggests hardship and difficulty ("the rigorous training of firefighters"). Also closely related is strict, which emphasizes undeviating conformity to rules, standards, or requirements ("strict enforcement of the law"). Stringent usually involves severe, tight restrictions or limitations ("the college has stringent admissions rules"). That's logical. After all, rigorous and rigid are both derived from rigēre, the Latin word meaning "to be stiff," and stringent and strict developed from the Latin verb stringere, meaning "to bind tight." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.