/stɜːn/, /stɝn/
OriginFrom Middle English stern, sterne, sturne, from Old English styrne (“stern, grave, strict, austere, hard, severe, cruel”), from Proto-Germanic *sturnijaz (“angry, astonished, shocked”), from Proto-Indo-European *ster- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with Scots stern (“bold, courageous, fierce, resolute”), Old High German stornēn (“to be astonished”), Dutch stuurs (“glum, austere”), Swedish stursk (“insolent”).
- Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
“I haue beene wooed, as I intreat thee now, / Euen by the ſterne, and direfull God of warre, / VVhoſe ſinowie necke in battel nere did bow, / VVho conquers where he comes in euery iarre; […]”
“stern as tutors, and as uncles hard”
“Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with gob”
- Grim and forbidding in appearance.
“these barren rocks, your stern inheritance”
- The rear part (after end) of a ship or other vessel.
“Holonyms: watercraft < vessel”
“Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of th”
- figurativelyThe post of management or direction.
“and sit chiefest stern of public weal”
- The hinder part of anything.
- The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.
“And all attonce her beaſtly bodie raizd / With doubled forces high aboue the ground: / Tho wrapping vp her wrethed ſterne arownd, / Lept fierce vpon his ſhield, [...]”
- A bird, the black tern, seabird.
- ambitransitive, obsoleteTo steer, to direct the course of (a ship).
- ambitransitiveTo propel or move backward or stern-first in the water.
Formssterner(comparative) · sternest(superlative) · sterne(alternative, obsolete) · sterns(plural) · sterns(present, singular, third-person) · sterning(participle, present) · sterned(participle, past) · sterned(past) · Sterns(plural) · Sterne(alternative)