stern, after part, quarter, poop, tail (noun)

the rear part of a ship

Stern, Isaac Stern (noun)

United States concert violinist (born in Russia in 1920)

buttocks, nates, arse, butt, backside, bum, buns, can, fundament, hindquarters, hind end, keister, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, stern, seat, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush, bottom, behind, derriere, fanny, ass (adj)

the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on

"he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?"

austere, stern (adj)

of a stern or strict bearing or demeanor; forbidding in aspect

"an austere expression"; "a stern face"

grim, inexorable, relentless, stern, unappeasable, unforgiving, unrelenting (adj)

not to be placated or appeased or moved by entreaty

"grim determination"; "grim necessity"; "Russia's final hour, it seemed, approached with inexorable certainty"; "relentless persecution"; "the stern demands of parenthood"

stern, strict, exacting (adj)

severe and unremitting in making demands

"an exacting instructor"; "a stern disciplinarian"; "strict standards"

austere, severe, stark, stern (adj)

severely simple

"a stark interior"

stern (Noun)

The rear part or after end of a ship or vessel.

Stern

The stern is the rear or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite of the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Originally, the term only referred to the aft port section of the ship, but eventually came to refer to the entire back of a vessel. The stern end of a ship is indicated with a white navigation light at night. Sterns on European and American wooden sailing ships began with two principal forms: the square or transom stern and the elliptical, fantail, or merchant stern, and were developed in that order. The hull sections of a sailing ship located before the stern are composed of a series of U-shaped rib-like frames set in a sloped or "cant" arrangement, with the last frame before the stern being called the fashion timber or fashion piece, so called for "fashioning" the after part of the ship. This frame is designed to support the various beams that make up the stern. In 1817 the British naval architect Sir Robert Seppings first introduced the concept of the round or circular stern. The square stern had been an easy target for enemy cannon, and could not support the weight of heavy stern chase guns. But Seppings' design left the rudder head exposed, and was regarded by many as simply ugly—no American warships were designed with such sterns, and the round stern was quickly superseded by the elliptical stern. The United States began building the first elliptical stern warship in 1820, a decade before the British. The USS Brandywine became the first sailing ship to sport such a stern. Though a great improvement over the transom stern in terms of its vulnerability to attack when under fire, elliptical sterns still had obvious weaknesses which the next major stern development—the iron-hulled cruiser stern—addressed far better and with much different materials.