sterne
sterne is the obsolete spelling of stern.
Meaning of stern
Adjective
stern (comparative sterner, superlative sternest)
- 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]
- Grim and forbidding in appearance.
- The remark earned me a stern rebuke.
- Synonyms:
- bleak, sombre, cheerless, comfortless, dark, morose, depressing, desolate, dire, disconsolate
Proper noun capitalized: Sterne
Sterne (plural Sternes)
- A surname.
Forms of sterne
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | sterner |
| superlative | sternest |
| Noun | |
| plural | sternes |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Sternes |
Origin of sterne
Variant spelling of Stern.
Words formed from sterne
Questions about sterne
- What does sterne mean?
- Sterne means a surname.
- What is sterne the obsolete spelling of?
- Sterne is the obsolete spelling of stern.
- What part of speech is sterne?
- Sterne is a proper noun.
Words near sterne in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sterne (page history and authors); Sterne (page history and authors); stern (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “sterne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sterne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.