astern

1. 1.

   stern foremost or backward

   “the steamer went astern at half speed”
2. 2.

   at or near or toward the stern of a ship or tail of an airplane

   “stow the luggage aft”

   “ships with square sails sail fairly efficiently with the wind abaft”

   “the captain looked astern to see what the fuss was about”

   Synonymsaftabaft
3. 3.

   (of a ship or an airplane) behind

   “we dropped her astern on the end of a seven-inch manilla, and she laid comfortably on the ebb tide”

   ship · airplane

Questions about astern

What does astern mean?

astern means "stern foremost or backward". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in astern?

astern has 2 syllables: a-stern. The stress falls on "a".

What is another word for astern?

Close synonyms include aft, abaft. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is astern a common word?

astern is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.