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Stem   /stɛm/   Listen
noun
Steem, Stem  n.  A gleam of light; flame. (Obs.)


Stem  n.  
1.
The principal body of a tree, shrub, or plant, of any kind; the main stock; the part which supports the branches or the head or top. "After they are shot up thirty feet in length, they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or the stem." "The lowering spring, with lavish rain, Beats down the slender stem and breaded grain."
2.
A little branch which connects a fruit, flower, or leaf with a main branch; a peduncle, pedicel, or petiole; as, the stem of an apple or a cherry.
3.
The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors. "All that are of noble stem." "While I do pray, learn here thy stem And true descent."
4.
A branch of a family. "This is a stem Of that victorious stock."
5.
(Naut.) A curved piece of timber to which the two sides of a ship are united at the fore end. The lower end of it is scarfed to the keel, and the bowsprit rests upon its upper end. Hence, the forward part of a vessel; the bow.
6.
Fig.: An advanced or leading position; the lookout. "Wolsey sat at the stem more than twenty years."
7.
Anything resembling a stem or stalk; as, the stem of a tobacco pipe; the stem of a watch case, or that part to which the ring, by which it is suspended, is attached.
8.
(Bot.) That part of a plant which bears leaves, or rudiments of leaves, whether rising above ground or wholly subterranean.
9.
(Zool.)
(a)
The entire central axis of a feather.
(b)
The basal portion of the body of one of the Pennatulacea, or of a gorgonian.
10.
(Mus.) The short perpendicular line added to the body of a note; the tail of a crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, etc.
11.
(Gram.) The part of an inflected word which remains unchanged (except by euphonic variations) throughout a given inflection; theme; base.
From stem to stern (Naut.), from one end of the ship to the other, or through the whole length.
Stem leaf (Bot.), a leaf growing from the stem of a plant, as contrasted with a basal or radical leaf.


verb
Stem  v. t.  
1.
To remove the stem or stems from; as, to stem cherries; to remove the stem and its appendages (ribs and veins) from; as, to stem tobacco leaves.
2.
To ram, as clay, into a blasting hole.


Stem  v. t.  (past & past part. stemmed; pres. part. stemming)  To oppose or cut with, or as with, the stem of a vessel; to resist, or make progress against; to stop or check the flow of, as a current. "An argosy to stem the waves." "(They) stem the flood with their erected breasts." "Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age."


Steem, Stem  v. i.  To gleam. (Obs.) "His head bald, that shone as any glass,... (And) stemed as a furnace of a leed (caldron)."


Stem  v. i.  To move forward against an obstacle, as a vessel against a current. "Stemming nightly toward the pole."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books



... west coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed strong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as in ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... hit the main stem, things were mere routine. The gambling joints took it for granted that beat cops had to be paid, and considered it part of their operating expense. The only problem was that Fats' Place was the first one on the list. Gordon didn't expect to be ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... I found myself at a cross path; I stopped involuntarily and thought, "I have stood here before; what is there here?" So it was. Two days before, I had here been struck by the fact that just above the knot on the bamboo stem there was a broad ring of blue-white hoarfrost, which blended imperceptibly with the greenish-yellow of the stem. In this fine congealed breath, I had thought at that time, one ought to write a secret message to one's sweetheart, in dainty characters, with a feather from a ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... though a goodly tree is felled, a stump remains which has vital force (or substance) in it, so, even in the utmost apparent desperateness of Israel's state, there will be in it 'the holy seed,' the 'remnant,' the true Israel, from which again the life shall spring, and stem and branches and waving foliage ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the fellow, as he proceeded with slow deliberation but a great show of alacrity to obey my injunctions. "Dash my buttons," he continued, "if I didn't think as you'd seen a ship afore to-day, and knowed the stem from the starn of her. Says I to myself, when I seen the way that you took hold of them yoke-lines, and the knowin' cock of your heye as you runned it over this here vessel's hull and spars and her riggin'—'this here gent as I've ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood


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