stern

• sterne (obsolete)

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: stûn, IPA^(key): /stɜːn/
• (General American) enPR: stûrn, IPA^(key): /stɝn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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

stern (comparative sterner, superlative sternest)

1. Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.

   Synonyms: grim, severe; see also Thesaurus:stern

   • 1594, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC, [verse 17], lines [97–100]:

     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; […]

   • 1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The First Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:

     stern as tutors, and as uncles hard

   • 2013 June 22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76:

     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.

   Synonyms: bleak, sombre; see also Thesaurus:cheerless

   • 1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion:

     these 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. The sense referring to a management post alludes to the fact that a sailing ship's captain would often stand on an aft deck.

stern (plural sterns)

2. (nautical) The rear part (after end) of a ship or other vessel.

   Synonyms: aft, poop

   Antonyms: bow, stem, forestem, fore, prow, prore

   Holonyms: watercraft < vessel

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     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.

4. (figurative) The post of management or direction.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     and sit chiefest stern of public weal

5. The hinder part of anything.
6. The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 18, page 8:

     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, [...]

• keel
• aft

stern (third-person singular simple present sterns, present participle sterning, simple past and past participle sterned)

1. (obsolete, ambitransitive) To steer, to direct the course of (a ship).
2. (ambitransitive, nautical) To propel or move backward or stern-first in the water.

From a variant of tern.

stern (plural sterns)

1. A bird, the black tern.

• 'rents, Ernst, Snert, nerts, rents, snert, terns

Possibly cognate with Latin sturnus (“starling”).

• Audio:

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /stɛrn/
• Rhymes: -ɛr

stern m (plural sterns or sternen, diminutive sterntje n)

1. tern

   Synonym: zeezwaluw

• stern on the Dutch Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^nl

stern

1. alternative form of sterne

From Middle High German stërne, stërre, stërn, from Old High German sterno, from Proto-Germanic *sternǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr (“star”). Cognate with German Stern, English star.

stern m

1. star

• Anthony R. Rowley, Liacht as de sproch: Grammatica della lingua mòchena Deutsch-Fersentalerisch, TEMI, 2003.

stern m

1. alternative form of sterno

• IPA^(key): /stɛrŋ/

stern m

1. breastbone

Borrowed from French sternum.

• IPA^(key): /ste̞rn/

stern n (plural sternuri)

1. breastbone