Stern

How to spell stern

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stern

What does stern mean?

1. adjectiveSerious, strict, and showing disapproval or firmness.
2. nounThe rear or back part of a ship or boat.

Stern in a sentence

• adjective

  The manager gave a stern warning about missed deadlines.

• noun

  The crew gathered at the stern to watch the harbour shrink behind them.

• adjective

  Her stern expression made it clear the joke had fallen flat.

• noun

  Waves slapped against the stern as the ferry reversed from the dock.

Where does stern come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The strict-and-severe meaning of stern comes straight from Old English styrne, an adjective that meant harsh, severe, or grim, and it traces back to a Germanic root linked to the idea of being stiff or rigid. That same family of words also feeds into 'stare' and 'starch', which share the underlying sense of stiffness. The boat-related noun is a separate arrival: it came into English around the 1300s, probably from Old Norse stjorn meaning 'a steering' (the back of a vessel being where the steering was done), which ties it to the verb 'steer'. The two words look identical today purely by coincidence of sound and spelling, having reached the same shape from different roots. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the only real spelling pitfall is remembering it is plain '-ern' rather than an '-urn' or '-irn' ending.

How the word is built

• stern (a single Old English root meaning strict or unyielding; no prefix or suffix)