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Stem vs Shaft - What's the difference?

stem | shaft |

In obsolete terms the difference between stem and shaft

is that stem is to hit with the stem of a ship; to ram while shaft is the entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.

As nouns the difference between stem and shaft

is that stem is the stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors while shaft is the entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.

As verbs the difference between stem and shaft

is that stem is to remove the stem from while shaft is to fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery.

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

    * ----

    shaft

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (lb) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
  • * , (Geoffrey Chaucer):
    • His sleep, his meat, his drink, is him bereft, /
  • * , (Roger Ascham):
    • A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.
  • The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin.
  • *
    • Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out.. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft .
  • (lb) Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
  • * , (John Milton):
    • And the thunder, / Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, / Perhaps
  • * , (Vicesimus Knox):
    • Some kinds of literary pursuitshave been attacked with all the shafts of ridicule.
  • Any long thin object, such as the handle of a tool, one of the poles between which an animal is harnessed to a vehicle, the driveshaft of a motorized vehicle with rear-wheel drive, an axle, etc.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Lee S. Langston, magazine=(American Scientist)
    • , title= The Adaptable Gas Turbine , passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}
  • A beam or ray of light.
  • * 1912 , (Willa Cather), :
    • They were a fine company of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the rafters.
  • The main axis of a feather.
  • (lb) The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick.
  • A long, narrow passage sunk into the earth, either natural or for artificial.
  • A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator; a liftshaft.
  • A ventilation or heating conduit; an air duct.
  • (lb) Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pediment.
  • * , (Ralph Waldo Emerson):
    • Bid time and nature gently spare /
  • The main cylindrical part of the penis.
  • The chamber of a blast furnace.

    • Usage notes

    In Early Modern English, the shaft referred to the entire body of a long weapon, such that an arrow's "shaft" was composed of its "tip", "stale" or "steal", and "fletching". empenne as "I [[feather, fether a shafte, I put fethers upon a steale". Over time, the word came to be used in place of the former "stale" and lost its original meaning.

    Synonyms

    * stale, stail, steal, stele, steel (arrows, spears ) * mineshaft (vertical underground passage )

    Derived terms

    (der top) * to give someone the shaft * to get the shaft (der bottom)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (slang) To fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery.
    • Your boss really shafted you by stealing your idea like that.
  • to equip with a shaft.
  • (slang) To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with.
    • Turns out my roommate was shafting my girlfriend.

    Anagrams

    * English transitive verbs