Meaning of word stemming

In linguistic morphology and information retrieval, stemming is the process of reducing inflected (or sometimes derived) words to their word stem, base or root form—generally a written word form. The stem need not be identical to the morphological root of the word; it is usually sufficient that related words map to the same stem, even if this stem is not in itself a valid root. Algorithms for stemming have been studied in computer science since the 1960s. Many search engines treat words with the same stem as synonyms as a kind of query expansion, a process called conflation.

A computer program or subroutine that stems word may be called a stemming program, stemming algorithm, or stemmer.

Examples[edit]

A stemmer for English operating on the stem cat should identify such strings as cats, catlike, and catty. A stemming algorithm might also reduce the words fishing, fished, and fisher to the stem fish. The stem need not be a word, for example the Porter algorithm reduces, argue, argued, argues, arguing, and argus to the stem argu.

History[edit]

The first published stemmer was written by Julie Beth Lovins in 1968.^[1] This paper was remarkable for its early date and had great influence on later work in this area.^{[citation needed]} Her paper refers to three earlier major attempts at stemming algorithms, by Professor John W. Tukey of Princeton University, the algorithm developed at Harvard University by Michael Lesk, under the direction of Professor Gerard Salton, and a third algorithm developed by James L. Dolby of R and D Consultants, Los Altos, California.

A later stemmer was written by Martin Porter and was published in the July 1980 issue of the journal Program. This stemmer was very widely used and became the de facto standard algorithm used for English stemming. Dr. Porter received the Tony Kent Strix award in 2000 for his work on stemming and information retrieval.

Many implementations of the Porter stemming algorithm were written and freely distributed; however, many of these implementations contained subtle flaws. As a result, these stemmers did not match their potential. To eliminate this source of error, Martin Porter released an official free software (mostly BSD-licensed) implementation^[2] of the algorithm around the year 2000. He extended this work over the next few years by building Snowball, a framework for writing stemming algorithms, and implemented an improved English stemmer together with stemmers for several other languages.

The Paice-Husk Stemmer was developed by Chris D Paice at Lancaster University in the late 1980s, it is an iterative stemmer and features an externally stored set of stemming rules. The standard set of rules provides a ‘strong’ stemmer and may specify the removal or replacement of an ending. The replacement technique avoids the need for a separate stage in the process to recode or provide partial matching. Paice also developed a direct measurement for comparing stemmers based on counting the over-stemming and under-stemming errors.

Algorithms[edit]

There are several types of stemming algorithms which differ in respect to performance and accuracy and how certain stemming obstacles are overcome.

A simple stemmer looks up the inflected form in a lookup table. The advantages of this approach are that it is simple, fast, and easily handles exceptions. The disadvantages are that all inflected forms must be explicitly listed in the table: new or unfamiliar words are not handled, even if they are perfectly regular (e.g. cats ~ cat), and the table may be large. For languages with simple morphology, like English, table sizes are modest, but highly inflected languages like Turkish may have hundreds of potential inflected forms for each root.

A lookup approach may use preliminary part-of-speech tagging to avoid overstemming.^[3]

The production technique[edit]

The lookup table used by a stemmer is generally produced semi-automatically. For example, if the word is «run», then the inverted algorithm might automatically generate the forms «running», «runs», «runned», and «runly». The last two forms are valid constructions, but they are unlikely.^{[citation needed]}.

Suffix-stripping algorithms[edit]

Suffix stripping algorithms do not rely on a lookup table that consists of inflected forms and root form relations. Instead, a typically smaller list of «rules» is stored which provides a path for the algorithm, given an input word form, to find its root form. Some examples of the rules include:

• if the word ends in ‘ed’, remove the ‘ed’
• if the word ends in ‘ing’, remove the ‘ing’
• if the word ends in ‘ly’, remove the ‘ly’

Suffix stripping approaches enjoy the benefit of being much simpler to maintain than brute force algorithms, assuming the maintainer is sufficiently knowledgeable in the challenges of linguistics and morphology and encoding suffix stripping rules. Suffix stripping algorithms are sometimes regarded as crude given the poor performance when dealing with exceptional relations (like ‘ran’ and ‘run’). The solutions produced by suffix stripping algorithms are limited to those lexical categories which have well known suffixes with few exceptions. This, however, is a problem, as not all parts of speech have such a well formulated set of rules. Lemmatisation attempts to improve upon this challenge.

Prefix stripping may also be implemented. Of course, not all languages use prefixing or suffixing.

Additional algorithm criteria[edit]

Suffix stripping algorithms may differ in results for a variety of reasons. One such reason is whether the algorithm constrains whether the output word must be a real word in the given language. Some approaches do not require the word to actually exist in the language lexicon (the set of all words in the language). Alternatively, some suffix stripping approaches maintain a database (a large list) of all known morphological word roots that exist as real words. These approaches check the list for the existence of the term prior to making a decision. Typically, if the term does not exist, alternate action is taken. This alternate action may involve several other criteria. The non-existence of an output term may serve to cause the algorithm to try alternate suffix stripping rules.

It can be the case that two or more suffix stripping rules apply to the same input term, which creates an ambiguity as to which rule to apply. The algorithm may assign (by human hand or stochastically) a priority to one rule or another. Or the algorithm may reject one rule application because it results in a non-existent term whereas the other overlapping rule does not. For example, given the English term friendlies, the algorithm may identify the ies suffix and apply the appropriate rule and achieve the result of friendl. Friendl is likely not found in the lexicon, and therefore the rule is rejected.

One improvement upon basic suffix stripping is the use of suffix substitution. Similar to a stripping rule, a substitution rule replaces a suffix with an alternate suffix. For example, there could exist a rule that replaces ies with y. How this affects the algorithm varies on the algorithm’s design. To illustrate, the algorithm may identify that both the ies suffix stripping rule as well as the suffix substitution rule apply. Since the stripping rule results in a non-existent term in the lexicon, but the substitution rule does not, the substitution rule is applied instead. In this example, friendlies becomes friendly instead of friendl’.

Diving further into the details, a common technique is to apply rules in a cyclical fashion (recursively, as computer scientists would say). After applying the suffix substitution rule in this example scenario, a second pass is made to identify matching rules on the term friendly, where the ly stripping rule is likely identified and accepted. In summary, friendlies becomes (via substitution) friendly which becomes (via stripping) friend.

This example also helps illustrate the difference between a rule-based approach and a brute force approach. In a brute force approach, the algorithm would search for friendlies in the set of hundreds of thousands of inflected word forms and ideally find the corresponding root form friend. In the rule-based approach, the three rules mentioned above would be applied in succession to converge on the same solution. Chances are that the brute force approach would be slower, as lookup algorithms have a direct access to the solution, while rule-based should try several options, and combinations of them, and then choose which result seems to be the best.

Lemmatisation algorithms[edit]

A more complex approach to the problem of determining a stem of a word is lemmatisation. This process involves first determining the part of speech of a word, and applying different normalization rules for each part of speech. The part of speech is first detected prior to attempting to find the root since for some languages, the stemming rules change depending on a word’s part of speech.

This approach is highly conditional upon obtaining the correct lexical category (part of speech). While there is overlap between the normalization rules for certain categories, identifying the wrong category or being unable to produce the right category limits the added benefit of this approach over suffix stripping algorithms. The basic idea is that, if the stemmer is able to grasp more information about the word being stemmed, then it can apply more accurate normalization rules (which unlike suffix stripping rules can also modify the stem).

Stochastic algorithms[edit]

Stochastic algorithms involve using probability to identify the root form of a word. Stochastic algorithms are trained (they «learn») on a table of root form to inflected form relations to develop a probabilistic model. This model is typically expressed in the form of complex linguistic rules, similar in nature to those in suffix stripping or lemmatisation. Stemming is performed by inputting an inflected form to the trained model and having the model produce the root form according to its internal ruleset, which again is similar to suffix stripping and lemmatisation, except that the decisions involved in applying the most appropriate rule, or whether or not to stem the word and just return the same word, or whether to apply two different rules sequentially, are applied on the grounds that the output word will have the highest probability of being correct (which is to say, the smallest probability of being incorrect, which is how it is typically measured).

Some lemmatisation algorithms are stochastic in that, given a word which may belong to multiple parts of speech, a probability is assigned to each possible part. This may take into account the surrounding words, called the context, or not. Context-free grammars do not take into account any additional information. In either case, after assigning the probabilities to each possible part of speech, the most likely part of speech is chosen, and from there the appropriate normalization rules are applied to the input word to produce the normalized (root) form.

n-gram analysis[edit]

Some stemming techniques use the n-gram context of a word to choose the correct stem for a word.^[4]

Hybrid approaches[edit]

Hybrid approaches use two or more of the approaches described above in unison. A simple example is a suffix tree algorithm which first consults a lookup table using brute force. However, instead of trying to store the entire set of relations between words in a given language, the lookup table is kept small and is only used to store a minute amount of «frequent exceptions» like «ran => run». If the word is not in the exception list, apply suffix stripping or lemmatisation and output the result.

Affix stemmers[edit]

In linguistics, the term affix refers to either a prefix or a suffix. In addition to dealing with suffixes, several approaches also attempt to remove common prefixes. For example, given the word indefinitely, identify that the leading «in» is a prefix that can be removed. Many of the same approaches mentioned earlier apply, but go by the name affix stripping. A study of affix stemming for several European languages can be found here.^[5]

Matching algorithms[edit]

Such algorithms use a stem database (for example a set of documents that contain stem words). These stems, as mentioned above, are not necessarily valid words themselves (but rather common sub-strings, as the «brows» in «browse» and in «browsing»). In order to stem a word the algorithm tries to match it with stems from the database, applying various constraints, such as on the relative length of the candidate stem within the word (so that, for example, the short prefix «be», which is the stem of such words as «be», «been» and «being», would not be considered as the stem of the word «beside»).^{[citation needed]}.

Language challenges[edit]

While much of the early academic work in this area was focused on the English language (with significant use of the Porter Stemmer algorithm), many other languages have been investigated.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

Hebrew and Arabic are still considered difficult research languages for stemming. English stemmers are fairly trivial (with only occasional problems, such as «dries» being the third-person singular present form of the verb «dry», «axes» being the plural of «axe» as well as «axis»); but stemmers become harder to design as the morphology, orthography, and character encoding of the target language becomes more complex. For example, an Italian stemmer is more complex than an English one (because of a greater number of verb inflections), a Russian one is more complex (more noun declensions), a Hebrew one is even more complex (due to nonconcatenative morphology, a writing system without vowels, and the requirement of prefix stripping: Hebrew stems can be two, three or four characters, but not more), and so on.

Multilingual stemming[edit]

Multilingual stemming applies morphological rules of two or more languages simultaneously instead of rules for only a single language when interpreting a search query. Commercial systems using multilingual stemming exist.^{[citation needed]}

Error metrics[edit]

There are two error measurements in stemming algorithms, overstemming and understemming. Overstemming is an error where two separate inflected words are stemmed to the same root, but should not have been—a false positive. Understemming is an error where two separate inflected words should be stemmed to the same root, but are not—a false negative. Stemming algorithms attempt to minimize each type of error, although reducing one type can lead to increasing the other.

For example, the widely used Porter stemmer stems «universal», «university», and «universe» to «univers». This is a case of overstemming: though these three words are etymologically related, their modern meanings are in widely different domains, so treating them as synonyms in a search engine will likely reduce the relevance of the search results.

An example of understemming in the Porter stemmer is «alumnus» → «alumnu», «alumni» → «alumni», «alumna»/»alumnae» → «alumna». This English word keeps Latin morphology, and so these near-synonyms are not conflated.

Applications[edit]

Stemming is used as an approximate method for grouping words with a similar basic meaning together. For example, a text mentioning «daffodils» is probably closely related to a text mentioning «daffodil» (without the s). But in some cases, words with the same morphological stem have idiomatic meanings which are not closely related: a user searching for «marketing» will not be satisfied by most documents mentioning «markets» but not «marketing».

Information retrieval[edit]

Stemmers are common elements in query systems such as Web search engines. The effectiveness of stemming for English query systems were soon found to be rather limited, however, and this has led early information retrieval researchers to deem stemming irrelevant in general.^[11] An alternative approach, based on searching for n-grams rather than stems, may be used instead. Also, stemmers may provide greater benefits in other languages than English.^[12][13]

Domain analysis[edit]

Stemming is used to determine domain vocabularies in domain analysis.^[14]

Use in commercial products[edit]

Many commercial companies have been using stemming since at least the 1980s and have produced algorithmic and lexical stemmers in many languages.^[15][16]

The Snowball stemmers have been compared with commercial lexical stemmers with varying results.^[17][18]

Google Search adopted word stemming in 2003.^[19] Previously a search for «fish» would not have returned «fishing». Other software search algorithms vary in their use of word stemming. Programs that simply search for substrings will obviously find «fish» in «fishing» but when searching for «fishes» will not find occurrences of the word «fish».

Text mining[edit]

Stemming is used as a task in pre-processing texts before performing text mining analyses on it.

See also[edit]

• Computational linguistics
• Derivation—stemming is a form of reverse derivation
• Inflection
• Lemma (morphology)—linguistic definition
• Lemmatization
• Lexeme
• Morphology (linguistics)
• Natural language processing—stemming is generally regarded as a form of NLP
• NLTK—implements several stemming algorithms in Python
• Root (linguistics)—linguistic definition of the term «root»
• Snowball (programming language)—designed for creating stemming algorithms
• Stem (linguistics)—linguistic definition of the term «stem»
• Text mining—stemming algorithms play a major role in commercial NLP software

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

• Apache OpenNLP—includes Porter and Snowball stemmers
• SMILE Stemmer—free online service, includes Porter and Paice/Husk’ Lancaster stemmers (Java API)
• Themis—open source IR framework, includes Porter stemmer implementation (PostgreSQL, Java API)
• Snowball—free stemming algorithms for many languages, includes source code, including stemmers for five romance languages
• Snowball on C#—port of Snowball stemmers for C# (14 languages)
• Python bindings to Snowball API
• Ruby-Stemmer—Ruby extension to Snowball API
• PECL—PHP extension to the Snowball API
• Oleander Porter’s algorithm—stemming library in C++ released under BSD
• Unofficial home page of the Lovins stemming algorithm—with source code in a couple of languages
• Official home page of the Porter stemming algorithm—including source code in several languages
• Official home page of the Lancaster stemming algorithm—Lancaster University, UK
• Official home page of the UEA-Lite Stemmer —University of East Anglia, UK
• Overview of stemming algorithms
• PTStemmer—A Java/Python/.Net stemming toolkit for the Portuguese language
• jsSnowball—open source JavaScript implementation of Snowball stemming algorithms for many languages
• Snowball Stemmer—implementation for Java
• hindi_stemmer—open source stemmer for Hindi
• czech_stemmer—open source stemmer for Czech
• Comparative Evaluation of Arabic Language Morphological Analysers and Stemmers
• Tamil Stemmer

запруживание, перегораживание, очистка от черешков, чистка

существительное ↓

Словосочетания

legal tanglements stemming from the museum’s refusal to return the looted carvings — правовые осложнения, вытекающие отказа из музея вернуть украденные резные работы  
preformed stemming — патронированная забойка  
sand-stemming between the charges of explosives — песчаные прослойки при зарядке скважин взрывными веществами  
sand stemming — песчаная забойка  
saw-dust-and-clay stemming — забойка из смеси глины с опилками  
stemming cartridge — забоечный патрон  
stemming list — список очередности постановки судов к причалу  
stemming machine — машина для отделения плодоножек; машина для забойки  
stemming of flow of blood — остановка кровотечения  
stemming plug — забоечный патрон  
stemming ratio — коэффициент забойки  

Возможные однокоренные слова

stem  — происходить, задерживать, запруживать, стебель, ствол, стержень, основа, ножка, род

These examples may contain rude words based on your search.

These examples may contain colloquial words based on your search.

Suggestions

The need for more cooperative initiatives aimed at stemming the trafficking of small arms was emphasized by some delegations.

Некоторые делегации подчеркнули необходимость в активизации совместных инициатив, направленных на пресечение торговли стрелковым оружием.

Many commercial companies have been using stemming since at least the 1980s and have produced algorithmic and lexical stemmers in many languages.

Многие коммерческие компании уже используют стемминг, по крайней мере, с 1980-х годов и разработали алгоритмические и лексические стеммеры для многих языков.

Emphasis will also be put on stemming the flow of precursor chemicals and identifying and seizing illicit proceeds.

Особое внимание будет уделяться также пресечению поставок химических веществ-прекурсоров, а также выявлению и изъятию незаконных доходов.

Special attention must continue to be accorded to stemming the proliferation of small arms, mercenaries and child soldiers.

Необходимо продолжать уделять особое внимание усилиям по пресечению распространения стрелкового оружия, прекращению использования сторонами наемников и детей-солдат.

Those forces will focus on stemming the increasing influx of drugs transiting the national territory and other goods smuggled into the country.

Эти силы сосредоточат свои усилия на пресечении расширяющегося притока наркотиков, который идет транзитом через национальную территорию, и других товаров, завозимых контрабандой в страну.

A constructive dialogue needs to be evolved for stemming proliferation without unduly constraining peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Необходимо обеспечить проведение конструктивного диалога о мерах по пресечению распространения, которые не приводили бы к неоправданному ограничению использования ядерной энергии в мирных целях.

The international community has developed priority programmes aimed at stemming trafficking in and consumption of opiates originating in Afghanistan.

Международное сообщество разработало приоритетные программы, направленные на пресечение незаконного оборота и потребления афганских опиатов.

It shares with other Governments the responsibility of facing up to the task of the prevention of this epidemic and of stemming its spread.

Оно разделяет с другими правительствами ответственность за выполнение задачи по предотвращению этой эпидемии и пресечению ее распространения.

Effective communication between the Board and competent national authorities were of critical importance in stemming the flow of precursor chemicals into illicit channels.

Эффективная связь между Комитетом и компетент-ными национальными органами имеет решающее зна-чение для пресечения утечки химических веществ-прекурсоров в незаконные каналы.

At the regional level, Tunisia had concluded a number of bilateral agreements on issues such as assessing threats and stemming terrorist financing.

На региональном уровне Тунис заключил ряд двусторонних соглашений по таким вопросам, как оценка угроз и пресечение финансирования терроризма.

Lebanon was among the first States in the region to adopt a scientific approach to stemming the spread of HIV.

Ливан был одним из первых государств региона, которое приняло научный подход к работе по пресечению распространения ВИЧ.

UNEP had also been encouraging interaction between Governments and producers which also had a vested interest in stemming illegal trade.

Наряду с этим ЮНЕП поощряла взаимодействие между правительствами и производителями, также заинтересованными в пресечении незаконной торговли.

The availability of opportunities for testing is also important in stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Наличие возможностей для тестирования также имеет большое значение для пресечения распространения ВИЧ/СПИДа.

The United Nations needs to mobilize its considerable field presence in identifying and stemming the tide of illegal business activity.

Организации Объединенных Наций необходимо мобилизовать свои мощные представительства на местах на выявление и пресечение усиливающейся незаконной коммерческой деятельности.

Defense and Military Contacts projects expand contacts between defense establishments to promote objectives that include stemming the proliferation of FSU WMD.

Проекты оборонительных и военных контактов расширяют контакты между военными ведомствами в интересах достижения целей, включая пресечение распространения ОМУ из бывшего Советского Союза.

Representatives welcomed the Board’s recommendations on stemming trafficking in drugs through the Internet.

Представители приветствовали рекомендации Комитета, касающиеся пресечения оборота психоактивных средств через Интернет.

Progress in stemming other lethal infectious diseases remains elusive.

Не наблюдается ощутимого прогресса и в предупреждении других инфекционных болезней, чреватых летальным исходом.

They also assist companies in various transactions stemming business.

Nonetheless, countries have taken action towards stemming the tide of gender-based violence.

Это не означает, что страны не принимают меры для борьбы с нарастающей проблемой гендерного насилия.

No results found for this meaning.

Suggestions that contain stemming

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PRONUNCIATION OF STEMMING

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF STEMMING

Stemming is a verb.

WHAT DOES STEMMING MEAN IN ENGLISH?

CONJUGATION OF THE VERB TO STEMMING

PRESENT

PAST

FUTURE

CONDITIONAL

IMPERATIVE

NONFINITE VERB FORMS

SYNONYMS OF «STEMMING»

The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «stemming» and belong to the same grammatical category.

TRANSLATION OF STEMMING

Find out the translation of stemming to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «STEMMING»

The term «stemming» is quite widely used and occupies the 26.398 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of stemming

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «STEMMING» OVER TIME

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «STEMMING»

Discover the use of stemming in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to stemming and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «STEMMING»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term stemming is used in the context of the following news items.

REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Stemming [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/stemming>. Apr 2023 ».

STEM

abbr.

science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

---

stem ¹

 (stĕm)

n.

1.

a. The main ascending part of a plant; a stalk or trunk.

b. A slender stalk supporting or connecting another plant part, such as a leaf or flower.

c. A banana stalk bearing several bunches of bananas.

2. A connecting or supporting part, especially:

a. The tube of a tobacco pipe.

b. The slender upright support of a wineglass or goblet.

c. The small projecting shaft with an expanded crown by which a watch is wound.

d. The rounded rod in the center of certain locks about which the key fits and is turned.

e. The shaft of a feather or hair.

f. The upright stroke of a typeface or letter.

g. Music The vertical line extending from the head of a note.

3. The main line of descent of a family.

4. Linguistics The main part of a word to which affixes are added.

5. Nautical The curved upright beam at the fore of a vessel into which the hull timbers are scarfed to form the prow.

6. The tubular glass structure mounting the filament or electrodes in an incandescent bulb or vacuum tube.

v. stemmed, stem·ming, stems

v.intr.

To have or take origin or descent: Her success stems mostly from hard work.

v.tr.

1. To remove the stem of: stemmed the apples.

2. To provide with a stem: wine glasses that are stemmed.

3. To make headway against (a tide or current, for example).

Idiom:

from stem to stern

From one end to another.

---

Synonyms: stem¹, arise, derive, emanate, flow, issue, originate, proceed, rise, spring
These verbs mean to come forth or come into being: customs that stem from the past; misery that arose from war; rights that derive from citizenship; disapproval that emanated from the teacher; happiness that flows from their friendship; prejudice that issues from fear; a proposal that originated in the Congress; a mistake that proceeded from carelessness; rebellion that rises in the provinces; new industries that spring from technology.

---

stem ²

 (stĕm)

v. stemmed, stem·ming, stems

v.tr.

1. To stop or stanch (a flow): stemmed the bleeding.

2. To restrain or stop: wanted to stem the growth of government.

3. To plug or tamp (a blast hole, for example).

4. Sports To turn (a ski, usually the uphill ski) by moving the heel outward.

v.intr. Sports

To stem a ski or both skis, as in making a turn.

---

[Middle English stemmen, from Old Norse stemma.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

stem

(stɛm)

n

1. (Botany) the main axis of a plant, which bears the leaves, axillary buds, and flowers and contains a hollow cylinder of vascular tissue

2. (Botany) any similar subsidiary structure in such plants that bears a flower, fruit, or leaf

3. (Botany) a corresponding structure in algae and fungi

4. any long slender part, such as the hollow part of a tobacco pipe that lies between the bit and the bowl, or the support between the base and the bowl of a wineglass, goblet, etc

5. (Plants) a banana stalk with several bunches attached

6. (Heraldry) the main line of descent or branch of a family

7. (Mechanical Engineering) a round pin in some locks on which a socket in the end of a key fits and about which it rotates

8. (Mechanical Engineering) any projecting feature of a component: a shank or cylindrical pin or rod, such as the pin that carries the winding knob on a watch

9. (Linguistics) linguistics the form of a word that remains after removal of all inflectional affixes; the root of a word, esp as occurring together with a thematic element. Compare root¹⁹

10. (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) the main, usually vertical, stroke of a letter or of a musical note such as a minim

11. (Electrical Engineering) electronics the tubular glass section projecting from the base of a light bulb or electronic valve, on which the filament or electrodes are mounted

12. (Nautical Terms)

a. the main upright timber or structure at the bow of a vessel

b. the very forward end of a vessel (esp in the phrase from stem to stern)

vb, stems, stemming or stemmed

13. (usually foll by: from) to be derived; originate: the instability stems from the war.

14. (Nautical Terms) (tr) to make headway against (a tide, wind, etc)

15. (tr) to remove or disengage the stem or stems from

16. (tr) to supply (something) with a stem or stems

[Old English stemn; related to Old Norse stafn stem of a ship, German Stamm tribe, Gothic stōma basis, Latin stāmen thread]

ˈstemˌlike adj

ˈstemmer n

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stem

(stɛm)

vb, stems, stemming or stemmed

1. (tr) to restrain or stop (the flow of something) by or as if by damming up

2. (tr) to pack tightly or stop up

3. (Skiing) skiing to manoeuvre (a ski or skis), as in performing a stem

n

(Skiing) skiing a technique in which the heel of one ski or both skis is forced outwards from the direction of movement in order to slow down or turn

[C15 stemmen, from Old Norse stemma; related to Old Norse stamr blocked, stammering, German stemmen to prop; see stammer]

ˈstemmer n

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Stem

(stɛm)

n

(Music, other) die Stem (di) the South African national anthem until 1991, when part of it was incorporated into the current anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. See Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

[C19: from Afrikaans, the call]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

stem¹

(stɛm)

n., v. stemmed, stem•ming. n.

1. the ascending axis of a plant, whether above or below ground, which ordinarily grows in an opposite direction to the root.

2. the stalk that supports a leaf, flower, or fruit.

3. a stalk of bananas.

4. something resembling or suggesting a leaf or flower stalk.

5. a long, slender part: the stem of a tobacco pipe.

6. the slender, vertical part of a goblet, wineglass, etc., between the bowl and the base.

7. a projection from the rim of a watch, having on its end a knob for winding the watch.

8. the circular rod in some locks about which the key fits and rotates.

9. the stock or line of descent of a family, esp. its original ancestry.

10. the underlying form of a word, consisting of a root alone or a root plus an affix, to which inflectional endings may be added.

11. the vertical line forming part of a musical note.

12. the main or relatively thick stroke of a letter in printing.

v.t.

13. to remove the stem from (a leaf, fruit, etc.).

v.i.

14. to arise or originate (usu. fol. by from).

[before 900; (n.) Middle English; Old English stemn, stefn, akin to Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, Old High German stam stem, Old Saxon, Old Norse stamn stem³]

stem′less, adj.

stem′like`, adj.

stem²

(stɛm)

v. stemmed, stem•ming,
n. v.t.

1. to stop, check, or restrain.

2. to dam up; stop the flow of (a stream, river, or the like).

3. to tamp, plug, or make tight, as a hole or joint.

4. to maneuver (a ski or skis) in executing a stem.

5. to stanch (bleeding).

v.i.

6. to execute a stem.

n.

7. an act or instance whereby a skier pushes the heel of one or both skis outward, as in making certain turns or to slow down.

[1400–50; late Middle English stemmen < Old Norse stemma to dam]

stem⁴

(stɛm)

n., v. stemmed, stem•ming. n.

1. (at the bow of a vessel) an upright into which the side timbers or plates are jointed.

2. the forward part of a vessel (often opposed to stern).

v.t.

3. to make headway against (a tide, current, gale, etc.).

4. to make progress against (any opposition).

[before 900; continuing Old English stefn, stemn (see stem¹); Middle English stampne, stamyn(e) appar. < the c. Old Norse stamn, stafn]

Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

stem

(stĕm)

1. The main, often long or slender part of a plant that usually grows upward above the ground and supports other parts, such as branches and leaves. Some underground plant structures, such as rhizomes and corms, are stems rather than roots.

2. A slender stalk supporting or connecting another plant part, such as a leaf or flower.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

stem

— The stem of a tree is etymologically the upright part, the part that «stands» up, from its Germanic base sta-, «stand.»

See also related terms for stands.

Farlex Trivia Dictionary. © 2012 Farlex, Inc. All rights reserved.

stem

Past participle: stemmed
Gerund: stemming

Imperative
stem
stem

Present
I stem
you stem
he/she/it stems
we stem
you stem
they stem

Preterite
I stemmed
you stemmed
he/she/it stemmed
we stemmed
you stemmed
they stemmed

Present Continuous
I am stemming
you are stemming
he/she/it is stemming
we are stemming
you are stemming
they are stemming

Present Perfect
I have stemmed
you have stemmed
he/she/it has stemmed
we have stemmed
you have stemmed
they have stemmed

Past Continuous
I was stemming
you were stemming
he/she/it was stemming
we were stemming
you were stemming
they were stemming

Past Perfect
I had stemmed
you had stemmed
he/she/it had stemmed
we had stemmed
you had stemmed
they had stemmed

Future
I will stem
you will stem
he/she/it will stem
we will stem
you will stem
they will stem

Future Perfect
I will have stemmed
you will have stemmed
he/she/it will have stemmed
we will have stemmed
you will have stemmed
they will have stemmed

Future Continuous
I will be stemming
you will be stemming
he/she/it will be stemming
we will be stemming
you will be stemming
they will be stemming

Present Perfect Continuous
I have been stemming
you have been stemming
he/she/it has been stemming
we have been stemming
you have been stemming
they have been stemming

Future Perfect Continuous
I will have been stemming
you will have been stemming
he/she/it will have been stemming
we will have been stemming
you will have been stemming
they will have been stemming

Past Perfect Continuous
I had been stemming
you had been stemming
he/she/it had been stemming
we had been stemming
you had been stemming
they had been stemming

Conditional
I would stem
you would stem
he/she/it would stem
we would stem
you would stem
they would stem

Past Conditional
I would have stemmed
you would have stemmed
he/she/it would have stemmed
we would have stemmed
you would have stemmed
they would have stemmed

Collins English Verb Tables © HarperCollins Publishers 2011

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

See Also: stem duchy stem ginger stem rot stem rust stem turn stem-end rot stemma stemmed stemmer stemmery stemson stemware stemwinder stemwinding Sten gun stench stench bomb stencil stencilize Stendhal Stengel Recent searches: View All

Go to Preferences page and choose from different actions for taps or mouse clicks. From the verb stem: (⇒ conjugate) stemming is: ⓘClick the infinitive to see all available inflections v pres p WordReference Random House Learner’s Dictionary of American English © 2023 stem1 /stɛm/USA pronunciation   n., v., stemmed, stem•ming.  n. [countable] Botanythe part of a plant that grows in an opposite direction to the root and that supports a leaf, flower, or fruit. a long, slender, supporting part, as of a wineglass or a tobacco pipe. Timea part that sticks out from the body of a watch, having on its end a knob for winding the watch. Grammara form of a word, made of a root alone or a root plus another part, such as a prefix or suffix, to which certain endings may be added:The word kindness is a stem made up of a root, kind, and a suffix, -ness, to which another suffix, -es, could be added. v. stem from, [~ + from + object] to come from; arise or originate from:Most of our problems stem from a lack of funds. stem2 /stɛm/USA pronunciation  v. [~ + object], stemmed, stem•ming. to check or slow down, esp. the flow of something:worked to stem the flow of blood from the wound. WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2023 stem1 (stem),USA pronunciation  n., v., stemmed, stem•ming.  n. Botanythe ascending axis of a plant, whether above or below ground, which ordinarily grows in an opposite direction to the root or descending axis. Botanythe stalk that supports a leaf, flower, or fruit. Botanythe main body of that portion of a tree, shrub, or other plant which is above ground; trunk; stalk. Botanya cut flower:We bought roses at the flower market for 50¢ a stem. Botanya petiole; peduncle; pedicel. Botanya stalk of bananas. something resembling or suggesting a leaf or flower stalk. a long, slender part:the stem of a tobacco pipe. the slender, vertical part of a goblet, wineglass, etc., between the bowl and the base. Informal Termsa drinking glass having a stem. the handle of a spoon. Timea projection from the rim of a watch, having on its end a knob for winding the watch. Buildingthe circular rod in some locks about which the key fits and rotates. Buildingthe rod or spindle by which a valve is operated from outside. the stock or line of descent of a family; ancestry or pedigree. Grammarthe underlying form, often consisting of a root plus an affix, to which the inflectional endings of a word are added, as tend-, the stem in Latin tendere «to stretch,» the root of which is ten-. Cf. base 1 (def. 18), theme (def. 5). Music and Dancethe vertical line forming part of a note. Slang Terms stems, the legs of a human being. the main or relatively thick stroke of a letter in printing. v.t. to remove the stem from (a leaf, fruit, etc.):Stem the cherries before cooking. v.i. to arise or originate:This project stems from last week’s lecture. bef. 900; Middle English; Old English stemn, stefn, equivalent. to ste- (variant of sta-, base of standan to stand) + -mn- suffix; akin to German Stamm stem, tribe; see staff1 stem′less, adj.  stem′like′, adj.  stem2  (stem),USA pronunciation v., stemmed, stem•ming, n.  v.t. to stop, check, or restrain. Civil Engineeringto dam up; stop the flow of (a stream, river, or the like). Buildingto tamp, plug, or make tight, as a hole or joint. Sport[Skiing.]to maneuver (a ski or skis) in executing a stem. to stanch (bleeding). v.i.  Sport[Skiing.]to execute a stem. n.  Sport[Skiing.]the act or instance of a skier pushing the heel of one or both skis outward so that the heels are far apart, as in making certain turns or slowing down. Old Norse stemma to dam or Middle Low German stemmen late Middle English stemmen 1400–50 stem3 (stem),USA pronunciation  v.t., stemmed, stem•ming.  Naval Termsto make headway against (a tide, current, gale, etc.). to make progress against (any opposition). verb, verbal use of stem4 1585–95 stem4 (stem),USA pronunciation  n. [Naut.] Nautical, Naval Terms(at the bow of a vessel) an upright into which the side timbers or plates are jointed. Nautical, Naval Termsthe forward part of a vessel (often opposed to stern). the cognate with Old Norse stamn, stafn in same sense bef. 900; continuing Old English stefn, stemn end-timber; special use of stem1; Middle English stampne, stamyn(e) apparently stem5 (stem),USA pronunciation v.t., stemmed, stem•ming.  Nautical, Naval Termsto arrange the loading of (a merchant vessel) within a specified time. Old Norse stefna to sail directly, aim, derivative of stafn stem4 variant of steven to direct one’s course 1895–1900 Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers:: stem /stɛm/ n the main axis of a plant, which bears the leaves, axillary buds, and flowers and contains a hollow cylinder of vascular tissue any similar subsidiary structure in such plants that bears a flower, fruit, or leaf a corresponding structure in algae and fungi any long slender part, such as the hollow part of a tobacco pipe that lies between the bit and the bowl, or the support between the base and the bowl of a wineglass, goblet, etc a banana stalk with several bunches attached the main line of descent or branch of a family a round pin in some locks on which a socket in the end of a key fits and about which it rotates any projecting feature of a component: a shank or cylindrical pin or rod, such as the pin that carries the winding knob on a watch the form of a word that remains after removal of all inflectional affixes; the root of a word, esp as occurring together with a thematic element Compare root1 the main, usually vertical, stroke of a letter or of a musical note such as a minim the tubular glass section projecting from the base of a light bulb or electronic valve, on which the filament or electrodes are mounted the main upright timber or structure at the bow of a vessel the very forward end of a vessel (esp in the phrase from stem to stern) vb (stems, stemming, stemmed) (intransitive) usually followed by from: to be derived; originate: the instability stems from the war (transitive) to make headway against (a tide, wind, etc) (transitive) to remove or disengage the stem or stems from (transitive) to supply (something) with a stem or stems Etymology: Old English stemn; related to Old Norse stafn stem of a ship, German Stamm tribe, Gothic stōma basis, Latin stāmen thread ˈstemˌlike adj stem /stɛm/ vb (stems, stemming, stemmed) (transitive) to restrain or stop (the flow of something) by or as if by damming up (transitive) to pack tightly or stop up to manoeuvre (a ski or skis), as in performing a stem n a technique in which the heel of one ski or both skis is forced outwards from the direction of movement in order to slow down or turn Etymology: 15th Century stemmen, from Old Norse stemma; related to Old Norse stamr blocked, stammering, German stemmen to prop; see stammer ‘stemming‘ also found in these entries (note: many are not synonyms or translations):

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WiktionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. stemmingnoun

   Movement against a current, especially a tidal current.

2. stemmingnoun

   A process for removing the inflexional, and sometimes derivational, affixes from words.

3. stemmingnoun

   The technique of bridging between two holds with hands and/or feet, applying forces to each in opposing directions in order to brace oneself in position.

WikipediaRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Stemming

   In linguistic morphology and information retrieval, stemming is the process of reducing inflected (or sometimes derived) words to their word stem, base or root form—generally a written word form. The stem need not be identical to the morphological root of the word; it is usually sufficient that related words map to the same stem, even if this stem is not in itself a valid root. Algorithms for stemming have been studied in computer science since the 1960s. Many search engines treat words with the same stem as synonyms as a kind of query expansion, a process called conflation.
   A computer program or subroutine that stems word may be called a stemming program, stemming algorithm, or stemmer.

Webster DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Stemming

   of Stem

FreebaseRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Stemming

   In linguistic morphology and information retrieval, stemming is the process for reducing inflected words to their stem, base or root form—generally a written word form. The stem need not be identical to the morphological root of the word; it is usually sufficient that related words map to the same stem, even if this stem is not in itself a valid root. Algorithms for stemming have been studied in computer science since 1968. Many search engines treat words with the same stem as synonyms as a kind of query broadening, a process called conflation.
   Stemming programs are commonly referred to as stemming algorithms or stemmers.

How to pronounce stemming?

How to say stemming in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of stemming in Chaldean Numerology is: 2

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of stemming in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1

Examples of stemming in a Sentence

1. Nydia Velazquez:

   It is my belief that the federal government must employ all appropriate mechanisms to prevent and address grievances stemming from alleged abusive practices.

2. Chaand Nagpaul:

   These factors could have serious consequences for the NHS and public health teams as well as business, education and wider society — therefore stemming the spread of the virus in the community with a series of manageable, targeted measures must be the priority right now.

3. Lin Sternlicht:

   An important technique to stop the stress response is to ground yourself in the present moment.Stress is often triggered by experiences that are not occurring in the moment, often stemming from past or future events and mind wandering, as such, grounding oneself is an effective technique to relieve stress. There are many techniques to ground yourself in the present moment, and the more you practice them the easier and more natural it will become.

4. Ron Johnson:

   Instead of trying to improve communications, Ron Johnson said, it appears ICE and its parent agency, DHS, are trying to root out Ron Johnson source. Ron Johnson believes the whistleblowers could face retribution for the revelation. The federal government has a very poor record of retaliation, we’ve held numerous hearings about this. It is really quite shocking how often the federal government retaliates. But I certainly will not stand for it, and I certainly don’t think this committee will stand for any retribution against those who had the courage to come forward to reveal this incident. Federal law expressly protects federal employees who provide information to Congress. In the Dec. 3 incident, USCIS agents were investigating Marquez for marriage fraud, stemming from his 2014 union with Mariya Chernykh, a Russian national married to Farook’s brother. Rodriguez told Johnson’s committee that it was a mistake for his agency’s San Bernardino office to refuse entry to ICE investigators.

5. Kimmo Stenvall:

   The last night comment on possible fines stemming from business transactions of Alcatel-Lucent is hurting the stock, the market is really sensitive about Nokia these days.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

stemming#10000#29687#100000

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