1. A slender or elongated structure that supports a plant or fungus or a plant part or plant organ
   "The celery stem was crisp and crunchy";
   - stalk
    
2. (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed
   "thematic vowels are part of the stem";
   - root, root word, base, theme, radical
    
3. Cylinder forming a long narrow part of something
   "The stem of the wine glass was elegantly curved";
   - shank
    
4. Front part of a vessel or aircraft
   "he pointed the stem of the boat toward the finish line";
   - bow[3], fore, prow
    
5. The tube of a tobacco pipe
   "He cleaned the stem of his pipe before refilling it"
    
6. A turn made in skiing; the back of one ski is forced outward and the other ski is brought parallel to it
   "Beginners often practice the stem turn before moving on to more advanced techniques";
   - stem turn

1. Grow out of, have roots in, originate in
   "The increase in the national debt stems from the last war"
    
2. Stop the flow of a liquid
   "stem the tide";
   - stanch [N. Amer], staunch, halt
    
3. Remove the stem from
   "for automatic natural language processing, the words must be stemmed"
    
4. Cause to point inward
   "stem your skis"

1. Acronym of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

Derived forms: stems, stemming, stemmed

Type of: check, cylinder, descriptor, form, front, orient, originate in, plant organ, remove, signifier, take, take away, tube, tubing, turn, turning, withdraw, word form

Part of: anchor, grip, ground tackle, handgrip, handle, hold, key, nail, pin, pipe, tobacco pipe, vessel, watercraft, wineglass

Encyclopedia: Stem, North Carolina