Stern

Pronunciation

• enPR: stû(r)n, IPA: /stɜː(ɹ)n/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)n

From 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-, *ter- ("rigid, stiff"). Cognate with Scots stern ("bold, courageous, fierce, resolute"), Old High German stornēn ("to be astonished"), Dutch stuurs ("glum, austere"), Swedish stursk ("insolent").

Full definition of stern

Adjective

1. Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
• John Drydenstern as tutors, and as uncles hard
• 2013-06-22, Snakes and ladders, 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 goblins.
2. Grim and forbidding in appearance.
• William Wordsworththese barren rocks, your stern inheritance

Most likely from Old Norse stjórn ("control, steering"), related to stýra ("to steer"), from Proto-Germanic *stiurijaną, whence also English steer. Also possibly from Old Frisian stiarne ("rudder"), from the same Germanic root.

Noun

1. (nautical) The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel.
• 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 7, 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 the skiff's rail, close to the stern.
2. (figurative) The post of management or direction.
• William Shakespeareand sit chiefest stern of public weal
3. The hinder part of anything.
4. The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.

Antonyms

• bow

Derived terms

• from stem to stern
• sternpost

Old English

Noun

1. A bird, the black tern.

Anagrams

• nerts
• rents, 'rents
• snert
• terns