stem
/stɛm/ noun B2- The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.
- A branch of a family.
- A branch, or group of branches, located outside a family or other cladistic group, but which is more closely related to that group than to any other taxon of the same rank.
- An advanced or leading position; the lookout.
- The above-ground stalk (technically axis) of a vascular plant, and certain anatomically similar, below-ground organs such as rhizomes, bulbs, tubers, and corms.
- A slender supporting member of an individual part of a plant such as a flower or a leaf; also, by analogy, the shaft of a feather. · the stem of an apple or a cherry
- A narrow part on certain man-made objects, such as a wine glass, a tobacco pipe, a spoon.
- The main part of an uninflected word to which affixes may be added to form inflections of the word. A stem often has a more fundamental root. Systematic conjugations and declensions derive from their stems.
Plural stems
From the library
He resembles the old Conventionalist of ’93, who said to Napoleon, in 1814, ‘You bend because your empire is a young stem, weakened by rapid growth.
If no cruel hand pluck me from my stem, yet I must perish by an early doom.
Determined to keep as far apart as possible, the one seated himself in the stem, and the other in the prow of the ship.
“The widow will never come out again.” And the red ants that live between the grass stems heard him, and began to troop down one after another to see if he had spoken the truth.
Other matches
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