Definition of "stern"

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; […]

1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […]; 2nd edition, London: […] Richard Field, […], 1594, [verse 17], lines

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: Printed for Jacob Tonson […]

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

these barren rocks, your stern inheritance

1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion

Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the stern.

1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 7, in Mr. Pratt's Patients

and sit chiefest stern of public weal

1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]

And all attonce her beaſtly bodie raizd / With doubled forces high aboue the ground: / Tho wrapping vp her wrethed ſterne arownd, / Lept fierce vpon his ſhield, [...]

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 18, page 8