Definition

1. Noun:

   • A main structural part of a plant: The slender, elongated structure that supports leaves, flowers, or fruits, and transports fluids.
   • A long, thin supporting or connecting part: The cylindrical or narrow section of an object, such as the tube of a pipe or the shaft of a glass.
   • The main part of a word: (Linguistics) The base form of a word to which prefixes or suffixes can be added.
   • The forwardmost part of a ship or boat: The structure at the very front of a vessel.

2. Verb:

   • To originate or arise from: To have something as its source or cause.
   • To stop or restrict the flow of something: To dam up or restrain the progress of a liquid or a trend.
   • To remove the stem from: To detach the main stalk from a fruit, leaf, or flower.

Usage Examples

• Noun:

  • The rose has a thorny stem.
  • In the word "unhappiness," the stem is "happy."
  • The ship's stem cut through the waves.

• Verb:

  • Many of the region's problems stem from economic inequality.
  • The crew worked to stem the leak in the hull.
  • Please stem the cherries before adding them to the salad.

Advanced Usage

• "To stem the tide": To try to stop or control a powerful force or trend.

  • The new policy aims to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

• In linguistics, "stemming": The process of reducing inflected words to their word stem.

  • Search engines often use stemming to find all forms of a word.

Variants and Related Words

• Stemless (adj): Lacking a stem.
• Stemware (n): Drinking glasses with a stem, like wine glasses.
• Stem cell (n): A biological cell that can differentiate into other cell types.

Synonyms

• Noun: Stalk, trunk, shaft, origin, root.
• Verb: Originate, arise, derive, stop, halt, check.

Related Phrasal Verbs

• Stem from: To originate from or be caused by.
  • His fear of dogs stems from a childhood incident.

Related Idioms

• From stem to stern: From the front to the back of a ship; completely or throughout.
  • They cleaned the yacht from stem to stern.

Noun

1. a turn made in skiing; the back of one ski is forced outward and the other ski is brought parallel to it
2. front part of a vessel or aircraft
   • he pointed the bow of the boat toward the finish line
3. the tube of a tobacco pipe
4. cylinder forming a long narrow part of something
5. a slender or elongated structure that supports a plant or fungus or a plant part or plant organ
6. (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed
   • thematic vowels are part of the stem

Verb

1. remove the stem from
   • for automatic natural language processing, the words must be stemmed
2. stop the flow of a liquid
   • staunch the blood flow
   • stem the tide
3. cause to point inward
   • stem your skis
4. grow out of, have roots in, originate in
   • The increase in the national debt stems from the last war