Stem vs Step - What's the difference?
stem | step |
The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.
* Milton
* Herbert
A branch of a family.
* Shakespeare
An advanced or leading position; the lookout.
* Fuller
(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
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.
*
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.
To remove the stem from.
To be caused]] or [[derive, derived; to originate.
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:
To ram (clay, etc.) into a blasting hole.
To stop, hinder (for instance, a river or blood).
* Denham
* Alexander Pope
(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.
To move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession.
To walk; to go on foot; especially, to walk a little distance.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
, page=13 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist)
, title= To walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely.
* Home the swain retreats, His flock before him stepping to the fold. —
(figuratively) To move mentally; to go in imagination.
* They are stepping almost three thousand years back into the remotest antiquity. — (Alexander Pope)
To set, as the foot.
(nautical) To fix the foot of (a mast) in its step ; to erect.
* 1898 , (Joseph Conrad),
An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.
*
*:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.
*Sir (Henry Wotton) (1568-1639)
*:The breadth of every single step or stair should be never less than one foot.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4
, passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}
A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.
:
The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running. Used also figuratively of any kind of progress.
:
*(Isaac Newton) (1642-1727)
*:To derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy.
A small space or distance.
:
A print of the foot; a footstep; a footprint; track.
A gait; manner of walking.
:
*1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,
*:Warwick passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step .
Proceeding; measure; action; act.
*(Alexander Pope) (1688-1744)
*:The reputation of a man depends on the first steps he makes in the world.
*(William Cowper) (1731-1800)
*:Beware of desperate steps . The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
*(George Washington Cable) (1844-1925)
*:I have lately taken steps to relieve the old gentleman's distresses.
(lb) A walk; passage.
*(John Dryden)
*:Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree.
(lb) A portable framework of stairs, much used indoors in reaching to a high position.
(lb) A framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.
(lb) One of a series of offsets, or parts, resembling the steps of stairs, as one of the series of parts of a cone pulley on which the belt runs.
(lb) A bearing in which the lower extremity of a spindle or a vertical shaft revolves.
(lb) The interval between two contiguous degrees of the scale.
:Usage note: The word tone is often used as the name of this interval; but there is evident incongruity in using tone for indicating the interval between tones. As the word scale is derived from the Italian scala , a ladder, the intervals may well be called steps.
(lb) A change of position effected by a motion of translation.
:(William Kingdon Clifford)
In nautical terms the difference between stem and step
is that stem is the vertical or nearly vertical forward extension of the keel, to which the forward ends of the planks or strakes are attached while step is a framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.As nouns the difference between stem and step
is that stem is the stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors while step is an advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.As verbs the difference between stem and step
is that stem is to remove the stem from while step is to move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession.stem
English
(wikipedia stem)Etymology 1
(etyl) stemn, .Noun
(en noun)- all that are of noble stem
- While I do pray, learn here thy stem / And true descent.
- This is a stem / Of that victorious stock.
- Wolsey sat at the stem more than twenty years.
- 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 .
- the stem of an apple or a cherry
Derived terms
* brain stem * from stem to stern * stem cell * stemless * stemplot * unstemmedVerb
(stemm)- to stem''' cherries; to '''stem tobacco leaves
- The current crisis stems from the short-sighted politics of the previous government.
- 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
Etymology 2
From (etyl) . Cognate with German stemmen, Dutch stemmen, stempen; compare (stammer).Verb
(stemm)- to stem a tide
- [They] stem the flood with their erected breasts.
- Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age.
Synonyms
* (sense) to be due to, to arise from * See alsoEtymology 3
External links
* * *Anagrams
* ----step
English
Verb
Ideas coming down the track, passage=A “moving platform” scheme
- We put everything straight, stepped the long-boat's mast for our skipper, who was in charge of her, and I was not sorry to sit down for a moment.