stern🔊

Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.

Grim and forbidding in appearance.

(nautical) The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel.

(figurative) The post of management or direction.

The hinder part of anything.

The tail of an animal; now used only of the tail of a dog.

(obsolete) To steer, to direct the course of (a ship).

(nautical) To propel or move backward or tail-first in the water.

A bird, the black tern.