Adjective: stern
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | sterner |
| Superlative | sternest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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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]:]
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stern as tutors, and as uncles hard [1693, 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. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:]
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Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. [2013 June 22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76:]
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The remark earned me a stern rebuke.
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these barren rocks, your stern inheritance [1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion:]
Adjectives inflected like stern
sallow,
smooth,
slight,
sleigh,
sordid,
somber,
shweet,
shrill,
shrewd,
yellow,
yaller,
hard knock,
DRY,
Greek,
cut short,
unquiet,
unclean,
indiscreet,
chipper,
straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
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”). See: Dutch Adjectives '
stuurs', Swedish Adjectives '
stursk'.