Astern means at or towards the back of a ship. Look astern, fall astern, going astern.
Going astern means moving backwards, which is what the engines are doing when a ship stops. Astern of us means behind us. It is one of a family of sailing words built with a-, alongside aloft, aground, abeam and ahead.
1adverbasternAt or towards the back of a ship.
“The sailors watched the harbour lights fade astern as they headed out to sea.”
astern is a direction.
aSTERN → back at the STERN
Stand at the stern of the boat and look back: everything you can see behind you is in that direction.
hooks ontostern
Proto-Indo-European
*ster- — rigid, stiff
Proto-Germanic
*sturnijaz — angry, astonished, shocked
Old English
styrne — stern, grave, strict, austere, hard, severe, cruel
Middle English
stern
English
stern
English, today
astern
From a- + stern. stern comes from Middle English stern, sterne, sturne, from Old English styrne (“stern, grave, strict, austere, hard, severe, cruel”), from Proto-Germanic sturnijaz (“angry, astonished, shocked”), from Proto-Indo-European ster- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with Scots stern (“bold, courageous, fierce, resolute”), Old High German stornēn (“to be astonished”), Dutch stuurs (“glum, austere”), Swedish stursk (“insolent”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA