stern
Having a hardness and severity of nature or manner.
Other meanings
Grim and forbidding in appearance.
“The remark earned me a stern rebuke.”
Word history
From Old English "styrne" (stern, grave, strict, austere, hard, severe, cruel).
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “stern” on Wiktionary, by its contributors, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.