stem

Noun

• a turn made in skiing; the back of one ski is forced outward and the other ski is brought parallel to it

• front part of a vessel or aircraft
  • he pointed the bow of the boat toward the finish line
    

• the tube of a tobacco pipe

• cylinder forming a long narrow part of something

• a slender or elongated structure that supports a plant or fungus or a plant part or plant organ

• (linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed
  • thematic vowels are part of the stem
    

Verb

• remove the stem from
  • for automatic natural language processing, the words must be stemmed
    

• stop the flow of a liquid
  • staunch the blood flow
    
  • stem the tide
    

• cause to point inward
  • stem your skis
    

• grow out of, have roots in, originate in
  • The increase in the national debt stems from the last war
    

Related words

• Synonyms: 
  stem turn , bow , fore , prow , shank , stalk , root , root word , base , theme , radical , stanch , staunch , halt