Stern

/stɜːn/ · adjective

Meaning

Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner..

Definitions by Sense

1. Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
2. Grim and forbidding in appearance.
3. (nautical) The rear part (after end) of a ship or other vessel.
4. (figurative) The post of management or direction.
5. The hinder part of anything.
6. The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.
7. (obsolete, ambitransitive) To steer, to direct the course of (a ship).
8. (ambitransitive, nautical) To propel or move backward or stern-first in the water.

Example Sentences

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 goblins.

these barren rocks, your stern inheritance

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 the skiff's rail, close to the stern.

and sit chiefest stern of public weal

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, [...]

Synonyms for stern

Antonyms for stern

Related Words

Word Forms

• sterner
• sternest
• sterne
• sterns
• sterning
• sterned

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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