stern
UK /stɜːn/ · US /stɝn/ adjective, noun, verb, proper noun
Forms sterner sternest sterns sterning sterned sterne
- adjective Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
- adjective Grim and forbidding in appearance. “The remark earned me a stern rebuke.”
- noun (nautical) The rear part (after end) of a ship or other vessel.
- noun (figurative) The post of management or direction.
- noun The hinder part of anything.
- noun The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.
- verb (obsolete, ambitransitive) To steer, to direct the course of (a ship).
- verb (ambitransitive, nautical) To propel or move backward or stern-first in the water.
- noun A bird, the black tern, seabird.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
grim severe bleak sombre cheerless comfortless dark morose depressing desolate dire disconsolate dismal doleful dolesome drear drearisome dreary dreich forlorn after part quarter poop tail Isaac Stern buttocks nates arse butt backside
Antonyms
animated cheerful emotional empathic gregarious kindly lenient soft unstrict vivacious bow stem
Etymology
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- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with Scots stern (“bold, courageous, fierce, resolute”), Old High German stornēn (“to be astonished”), Dutch stuurs (“glum, austere”), Swedish stursk (“insolent”).
Inherited from Middle English sterne, 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. The sense referring to a management post alludes to the fact that a sailing ship's captain would often stand on an aft deck.
From a variant of tern.
* As a German and Jewish surname, from the noun Stern (“star”). This was also borrowed into various Slavic languages such as Serbo-Crotian and Slovenian.
* As an English surname, from the adjective stern.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The black tern.
- adjective Having a certain hardness or severity of nature, manner, or aspect; hard; severe; rigid; rigorous; austere; fixed; unchanging; unrelenting; hence, serious; resolute; harsh; as, a sternresolve; a stern necessity; a stern heart; a stern gaze; a stern decree.
- noun The helm or tiller of a vessel or boat; also, the rudder. [Obs.]
- noun The after or rear end of a ship or other vessel, or of a boat; the part opposite to the stem, or prow.
Etymology [AS. stearn a kind of bird. See Starling.]
Etymology [OE. sterne, sturne, AS. styrne; cf. D. stuurish stern, Sw. stursk refractory. *166.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “stern”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details