ster-neh₂-
“to spread flat, lay out”stern, consternation, strewn, prostrate
Extended form of *ster- giving Latin sternere, English consternation, prostrate.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *ster-neh₂- means "to spread flat, to lay out, to strew," combining the base *ster- "to spread" with the transitive suffix *-neh₂-. Pokorny (IEW 1029–1030) reconstructs a broad family under *ster- encompassing notions of spreading, scattering, and extending over a surface. Latin sternere "to spread, to lay flat, to pave" is the central reflex, and its participial stem strāt- generated an extraordinary English vocabulary: stratum and its plural strata, stratify, street (via Latin strāta via "paved road"), and prostrate (literally "spread flat before"). The military term stratagem derives from Greek stratēgós "general," from the related notion of spreading out an army. In Greek, Beekes connects stórnymi "I spread" and strōtós "spread, paved" to the same PIE source. The Germanic branch preserved the root in English strew and strewn, Old English strēowian, maintaining the original sense of scattering across a surface. Watkins traces the full semantic range from the physical act of throwing seed or rushes across a floor to the abstract concept of a geological layer. The root thus maps a journey from the most concrete of human activities — laying rushes on a dirt floor, paving a road with stones — to the technical vocabulary of geology, architecture, and military science, all unified by the image of something extended flat across a plane.