Word.ws English Dictionary

stern

UK/stɜːn//stɝn/

stern adjective: having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.

stern: having a hardness and severity of nature or manner
Image: Deepak, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

stern (comparative sterner, superlative sternest)

  1. 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; […]1594, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC, [verse 17], lines [97–100]
    • stern as tutors, and as uncles hard1693, 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. […]...
    Synonyms:
    grim, severe
  2. Grim and forbidding in appearance.
    • The remark earned me a stern rebuke.
    • these barren rocks, your stern inheritance1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion

Noun (1)

stern (plural sterns)

  1. 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 the skiff's rail, close to the stern.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    aft, poop
    Antonyms:
    bow, stem, forestem, fore, prow, prore
  2. (figuratively) The post of management or direction.
    • and sit chiefest stern of public weal1591 (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]...
  3. The hinder part of anything.
  4. 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, [...]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 18, page 8

Verb

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

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

Noun (2)

stern (plural sterns)

  1. A bird, the black tern, seabird.

Proper noun capitalized: Stern

Stern (plural Sterns)

  1. A surname.

stern meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

stern in Hindi

the rear part or after end of a ship or vessel
दुंबाल dumbāl, दबूसा dabūsā, पिच्छल picchal, पिछाड़ी pichāṛī

stern in Tamil

கடுமையான

stern in Urdu

درشت

stern in Bengali

কঠোর, কঠোর প্রকৃতির, জাহাজের পশ্চাৎভাগ
More languagesFewer languages
stern in Malayalam
കർശന kaṟśana, കർക്കശ kaṟkkaśa, അമരം amaraṁ
stern in Kannada
ಕಠೋರ, ನಿಷ್ಠುರ, ಗಡುಸಿನ, ಕಠಿನ
stern in Gujarati
સ્ટર્ન
stern in Sanskrit
स्थिर sthirá
stern in Nepali
स्टर्न
stern in Tagalog
popa
stern in Arabic
صَارِم ṣārim, مُتَشَدِّد mutašaddid, مُؤَخَّرَة muʔaḵḵara
stern in Malay
buritan
stern in Persian
پاشْنِه pâšne
stern in Thai
ท้ายเรือ táai-rʉʉa

Examples of stern in a sentence

  • Her outside was stern, but inside was a heart of gold.
  • A stern voice boomed over the loudspeaker.
  • He had planned to ground his son for a month, but relented and decided to give him a stern lecture instead.

All 40 example sentences with stern

Synonyms of stern

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

6 more antonymsFewer antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of stern

Forms of stern

Adjective
comparativesterner
superlativesternest
alternative form (obsolete)sterne
Noun
pluralsterns
Verb
third-person singular presentsterns
present participlesterning
past participlesterned
paststerned
Proper noun
pluralSterns
alternative formSterne

Origin of stern

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.

Words formed from stern

Phrases with stern

Words that rhyme with stern

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stern

What does stern mean?
Stern means having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
What is stern in Hindi?
Stern in Hindi is दुंबाल (dumbāl), दबूसा (dabūsā), पिच्छल (picchal). See Stern meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is stern?
Stern can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce stern?
Stern is pronounced /stɜːn/ (UK).

Words near stern in the dictionary

  1. sterlinghillite
  2. sterlingly
  3. sterlingness
  4. sterlings
  5. Sterlitamak
  6. stern
  7. stern chase
  8. stern chaser
  9. stern chasers
  10. stern chases
  11. stern frame

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stern (page history and authors); Stern (page history and authors); stern (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stern (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stern (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stern (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stern (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); स्थिर (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); stern (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-stern.ogg.

Cite this entry: “stern.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.