sterner
sterner is the comparative form 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: Sterner
Sterner (plural Sterners)
- A surname.
Forms of sterner
| plural | Sterners |
|---|
Phrases with sterner
Questions about sterner
- What does sterner mean?
- Sterner means a surname.
- What is sterner the comparative form of?
- Sterner is the comparative form of stern.
- What part of speech is sterner?
- Sterner is a proper noun.
Words near sterner in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sterner (page history and authors); Sterner (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.
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Cite this entry: “sterner.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sterner. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.