Sternian

comparative more Sternian · superlative most Sternian

1. Of or relating to Laurence Sterne, Irish novelist.

   They were as compact as his college work had been Sternian in its discursiveness.

   1891 December 28, The Unitarian Review, volume 36, page 448

   3 more examples

   So too does his account of the master's pocket watch, another Sternian acquisition.

   2000, Stephen Werner, The Comic Diderot: A Reading of the Fictions, page 125

   The final volume, moreover, contains a highly self-conscious, Sternian passage suggesting that the work was interrupted by some political misfortune befalling the narrator: the latter's uncle, Jean-Claude Ann'Quin Bredouille, has decided to burn the remaining memoirs and to return to his village.

   2006, David J. Denby, Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760-1820

   In the opening of Bednyi Leandr, for example, the humorous voice of the narrator engages in a synchronic reflection on the act of writing in the Sternian manner.

   2006, Alessandra Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin: Russian Fiction in the Reign of Alexander I (1801-1825)

comparative more Sternian · superlative most Sternian

1. Of or relating to Howard Stern (born 1954), American radio and television personality.

   But they add two other elements to their mix: a healthy helping of Howard Sternian locker-room talk and, much more important, a startlingly egalitarian ethic of listener participation.

   2001, Brill's Content, volume 4, page 100

   2 more examples

   In fact, it is this inherited refrain, blurted out in the same tone of voice, that serves as a kind of mantra for the entire Sternian enterprise: a perpetually indicting bee in Howard's bonnet (and that hairdo is definitely a bonnet).

   1994, Barbara Kruger, Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances

   He wants to see what's bouncing around inside your blouse or dangling down your inside trouser leg and to refuse him is to take refuge in a modesty that, in a Sternian universe, is almost unbecoming.

   2001, Charles Marowitz, Stage Dust: A Critic's Cultural Scrapbook from the 1990s, page 124