What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Stem vs Femme - What's the difference?

stem | femme |

As nouns the difference between stem and femme

is that stem is (countable) while femme is (archaic|rare) a woman, a wife, particularly in heraldry.

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

    * ----

    femme

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (archaic, rare) A woman, a wife, particularly in heraldry.
  • * 1885 , Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night , Night 18:
  • Then I turned to him and said, "O my lord, I have that to propose to thee wherein thou must not cross me; and this it is that, when we reach Baghdad, my native city, I offer thee my life as thy handmaiden in holy matrimony, and thou shalt be to me baron and I will be femme to thee."
  • (slang, LGBT) A feminine lesbian, especially one who is attracted to masculine (butch) lesbians.
  • ----