0 severe, or showing disapproval: --
2 a person's bottom (= the part of the body that you sit on) --
3 severe: --
Sterner punishment may produce better behavior, but I doubt it.
4 the back end of a ship: --
The 23-year-old skipper said he heard a loud crack from the stern before the boat sank.
We reached the tip of Manhattan Island with a Staten Island ferry chasing our stern.
When the bow began to rise we all cheered, but then we found that the stern had been crushed by the weight of water.
He devised the method, used ever since, of attaching an underwater cable to the sterns of the ships, and using tugs to tow them rapidly across calm seas, backwards.