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Stem vs Cease - What's the difference?

stem | cease |

As a noun stem

is (countable).

As a verb cease is

(formal|intransitive) to stop.

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)

    • External links

    * * *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    cease

    English

    Verb

    (ceas)
  • (formal) To stop.
    • And with that, his twitching ceased .
  • (formal) To stop doing (something).
    • And with that, he ceased twitching.
  • (obsolete) To be wanting; to fail; to pass away.
  • * Bible, Deuteronomy xv. 11
    • The poor shall never cease out of the land.