sternness

Other forms of sternness

plural

sternnesses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sternness

What does sternness mean?

sternness means "the quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sternness?

sternness has 2 syllables: stern-ness. The stress falls on "stern". In IPA it is /ˈstɝnnəs/.

What is another word for sternness?

Close synonyms include strictness. 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 sternness a common word?

sternness is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.