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Stem vs Avoid - What's the difference?

stem | avoid |

As a noun stem

is (countable).

As a verb avoid is

to keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor not to meet; to shun; to abstain from.

stem

English

(wikipedia stem)

Etymology 1

(etyl) stemn, .

Noun

(en noun)
  • The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.
  • * Milton
  • all that are of noble stem
  • * Herbert
  • While I do pray, learn here thy stem / And true descent.
  • A branch of a family.
  • * Shakespeare
  • This is a stem / Of that victorious stock.
  • An advanced or leading position; the lookout.
  • * Fuller
  • Wolsey sat at the stem more than twenty years.
  • (botany) The above-ground stalk (technically axis) of a vascular plant, and certain anatomically similar, below-ground organs such as rhizomes, bulbs, tubers, and corms.
  • * Sir Walter Raleigh
  • After they are shot up thirty feet in length, they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or the stem .
  • 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.
  • (linguistic morphology) 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 [[declension, declensions derive from their stems.
  • (typography) A vertical stroke of a letter.
  • (music) A vertical stroke of a symbol representing a note in written music.
  • (nautical) The vertical or nearly vertical forward extension of the keel, to which the forward ends of the planks or strakes are attached.
  • Derived terms
    * brain stem * from stem to stern * stem cell * stemless * stemplot * unstemmed

    Verb

    (stemm)
  • To remove the stem from.
  • to stem''' cherries; to '''stem tobacco leaves
  • To be caused]] or [[derive, derived; to originate.
  • The current crisis stems from the short-sighted politics of the previous government.
  • To descend in a family line.
  • To direct the stem (of a ship) against; to make headway against.
  • (obsolete) To hit with the stem of a ship; to ram.
  • * 1596 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , IV.ii:
  • As when two warlike Brigandines at sea, / With murdrous weapons arm'd to cruell fight, / Doe meete together on the watry lea, / They stemme ech other with so fell despight, / That with the shocke of their owne heedlesse might, / Their wooden ribs are shaken nigh a sonder
  • To ram (clay, etc.) into a blasting hole.
  • Etymology 2

    From (etyl) . Cognate with German stemmen, Dutch stemmen, stempen; compare (stammer).

    Verb

    (stemm)
  • To stop, hinder (for instance, a river or blood).
  • to stem a tide
  • * Denham
  • [They] stem the flood with their erected breasts.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age.
  • (skiing) To move the feet apart and point the tips of the skis inward in order to slow down the speed or to facilitate a turn.
  • Synonyms
    * (sense) to be due to, to arise from * See also

    Etymology 3

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    avoid

    English

    Verb

  • To keep away from; to keep clear of; to endeavor not to meet; to shun; to abstain from.
  • :I try to avoid the company of gamblers.
  • *1526 , Bible , tr. William Tyndale, Matthew 4:
  • *:The devyllsayde unto hym: all these will I geve the, iff thou wilt faull doune and worship me. Then sayde Jesus unto hym. Avoyde Satan.
  • *Milton
  • *:What need a man forestall his date of grief, / And run to meet what he would most avoid ?
  • *Macaulay
  • *:He carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open hostility.
  • *{{quote-news, year=2012, date=June 19, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
  • , title= England 1-0 Ukraine , passage=England could have met world and European champions Spain but that eventuality was avoided by Sweden's 2-0 win against France, and Rooney's first goal in a major tournament since scoring twice in the 4-2 victory over Croatia in Lisbon at Euro 2004.}}
  • (obsolete) To make empty; to clear.
  • :(Wyclif)
  • To make void, to annul; to refute (especially a contract).
  • *Spenser
  • *:How can these grants of the king's be avoided ?
  • (legal) To defeat or evade; to invalidate. Thus, in a replication, the plaintiff may deny the defendant's plea, or confess it, and avoid it by stating new matter.
  • :(Blackstone)
  • (obsolete) To emit or throw out; to void; as, to avoid excretions.
  • :(Sir Thomas Browne)
  • (obsolete) To leave, evacuate; to leave as empty, to withdraw or come away from.
  • *:
  • *:Anone they encountred to gyders / and he with the reed shelde smote hym soo hard that he bare hym ouer to the erthe / There with anone came another Knyght of the castel / and he was smyten so sore that he auoyded his fadel
  • *Francis Bacon
  • *:Six of us only stayed, and the rest avoided the room.
  • (obsolete) To get rid of.
  • :(Shakespeare)
  • (obsolete) To retire; to withdraw, depart, go away.
  • (obsolete) To become void or vacant.
  • Usage notes

    * This is a catenative verb that takes the gerund (-ing) . See

    Derived terms

    * avoid like the plague