Word.ws English Dictionary

stem-winder

stem-winder noun: a watch that is wound up by turning a small knob on a stem which holds a gear winding the mainspring.

stem-winder: a watch that is wound up by turning a small knob on a stem which holds a gear winding the mainspring
Image: Alexander T Carroll, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stem-winder (plural stem-winders)

  1. A watch that is wound up by turning a small knob on a stem which holds a gear winding the mainspring.
  2. (US) A rousing speech, especially by a politician.
  3. (US) Someone who gives such speeches; a great orator.
  4. (US, proscribed) A boring, interminable speech.
    • Or – heaven forbid – the Bill Clinton of 1988, who gave a tedious stemwinder in 1988 that has gone down in the books as the worst nominating speech in recent memory?2000, Bill Schneider and Keating Holland, “What to look for Thursday at the Democratic National Convention”, August 17, 2000, CNN, “Clinton comparisons”
  5. (US, obsolete) Something top-notch or first-rate.

Forms of stem-winder

pluralstem-winders

Origin of stem-winder

US, mid-late 19th century, originally referring to then-recent stem-wind watches (invented in 1840s, commercialized initially 1850s by Patek Philippe & Co.). These were expensive, top-notch watches, hence generalized (1892) to “top-notch”, particularly applied to speeches, or to the orator in question. Non-speech senses later fell out of use. Nuance of “rousing” speech possibly by analogy with watch being wound up (“tighten by winding, excite, rouse”). Circa 2000, later sense of “interminable speech” a folk etymology, in sense “a speech that lasts so long one must wind one’s watch”.

Questions about stem-winder

What does stem-winder mean?
Stem-winder means a watch that is wound up by turning a small knob on a stem which holds a gear winding the mainspring.
What part of speech is stem-winder?
Stem-winder is a noun.
What is the plural of stem-winder?
The plural of stem-winder is stem-winders.

Words near stem-winder in the dictionary

  1. stem-loops
  2. STEM-lord
  3. STEM-lords
  4. stem-mammal
  5. stem-mammals
  6. stem-winder
  7. stem-winders
  8. stemarene
  9. stembark
  10. stembarks
  11. stembok

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stem-winder (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “stem-winder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stem-winder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.