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stem

noun · verb

Simple meaning

The stock of a family.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

stehm
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈstɛm

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.

  2. A branch of a family.

  3. A slender or elongated structure that supports a plant or fungus or a plant part or plant organ

  4. 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.

  5. The tube of a tobacco pipe

  6. A narrow part on certain man-made objects, such as a wine glass, a tobacco pipe, a spoon.

verb

  1. To direct the stem (of a ship) against; to make headway against.

  2. To be caused or derived; to originate.

  3. To descend in a family line.

  4. To ram (clay, etc.) into a blasting hole.

  5. Stop the flow of a liquid

  6. transitive

    To stop, hinder (for instance, a river or blood).

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Varies by meaning

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.

Used this way, stem is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Family/home

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use stem

  • “Thematic vowels are part of the stem.”noun
  • “The increase in the national debt stems from the last war.”verb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Slender / above

valve stem

Main

main stemverb stem

Other combinations

brain stemstem cellstem rusthematopoietic stem

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • stemmedadjectiveInflected form

    Having a stem or stems or having a stem as specified.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • stem-cell researchnounCompound term

    Research on stem cells and their use in medicine.

  • stem gingernounCompound term

    Tropical Asian plant widely cultivated for its pungent root.

  • stem lettucenounCompound term

    Lettuce valued especially for its edible stems.

  • stem turnnounCompound term

    A turn made in skiing.

  • stem vowelnounCompound term

    A vowel that ends a stem and precedes an inflection.

  • stem-windernounCompound term

    A watch that is wound by turning a knob at the stem.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.