1 the main long thin part of a plant above the ground from which the leaves or flowers grow; a smaller part that grows from this and supports flowers or leaves:
long, trailing stems of ivy * a tall plant with branching stems
2 the long thin part of a wine glass between the bowl and the base
3 the thin tube of a tobacco pipe
4 (-stemmed) (in adjectives) having one or more stems of the type mentioned:
a long-stemmed rose * slender-stemmed wine glasses
5 (grammar) the main part of a word that stays the same when endings are added to it:
'Writ' is the stem of the forms 'writes', 'writing' and 'written'.
IDIOMS
from stem to stern all the way from the front of a ship to the back
verb (-mm-) [VN] to stop sth that is flowing from spreading or increasing:
The cut was bandaged to stem the bleeding. * They discussed ways of stemming the flow of smuggled drugs. * The government had failed to stem the tide of factory closures.
PHRASALVERBS
stem from sth (not used in the progressive tenses) to be the result of sth:
Most people's insecurities stem from something that happened in their childhood.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for stem is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is stem a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, stem is tagged as noun.
Does stem appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — stem appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
