Word.ws English Dictionary

sternwheel

sternwheel noun: a paddle wheel positioned at the stern of a vessel.

Noun

sternwheel (plural sternwheels)

  1. A paddle wheel positioned at the stern of a vessel.
    • The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the stern–wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment.1899 March, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MI, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part II

Forms of sternwheel

pluralsternwheels

Origin of sternwheel

From stern + wheel.

Words formed from sternwheel

Questions about sternwheel

What does sternwheel mean?
Sternwheel means a paddle wheel positioned at the stern of a vessel.
What part of speech is sternwheel?
Sternwheel is a noun.
What is the plural of sternwheel?
The plural of sternwheel is sternwheels.

Words near sternwheel in the dictionary

  1. sternwalks
  2. sternward
  3. sternwards
  4. sternway
  5. sternways
  6. sternwheel
  7. sternwheeler
  8. sternwheelers
  9. sternwheels
  10. steroid
  11. steroid dementia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sternwheel (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: “sternwheel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sternwheel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.