STERNNESS

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Uncompromising resolution

Synonyms:

sternness; strictness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("sternness" is a kind of...):

restrictiveness; unpermissiveness (a lack of permissiveness or indulgence and a tendency to confine behavior within certain specified limits)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "sternness"):

Puritanism (strictness and austerity in conduct and religion)

hardness; harshness; inclemency; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity; stiffness (excessive sternness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding

Example:

the sternness of his surroundings made him uncomfortable

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("sternness" is a kind of...):

asperity; grimness; hardship; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity (something hard to endure)

Derivation:

stern (severely simple)

Credits

Context examples:

"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added, "A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.