Word.ws English Dictionary

stem the tide

stem the tide verb: to slow or stop the flow of something.

Verb

stem the tide (third-person singular simple present stems the tide, present participle stemming the tide, simple past and past participle stemmed the tide)

  1. (idiomatic) To slow or stop the flow of something.
    • The news report stemmed the tide of concerned calls, but didn't stop them altogether.
    • To insure a future is crucial; it is crucial because gay communities and lesbian and gay-male citizens can conceivably become the next singled-out "target" in the "targeting" capability of the self-proclaimed Moral Majority and other groups with the same kind of agenda. Virginia Beach's vote to...1980 December 6, Nancy Stockwell, “Reaching Into Electoral Politics”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 4

Forms of stem the tide

third-person singular presentstems the tide
present participlestemming the tide
past participlestemmed the tide
paststemmed the tide

Questions about stem the tide

What does stem the tide mean?
Stem the tide means to slow or stop the flow of something.
What part of speech is stem the tide?
Stem the tide is a verb.
What is the past tense of stem the tide?
The past tense of stem the tide is stemmed the tide.

Words near stem the tide in the dictionary

  1. stem siren
  2. stem sirens
  3. stem stitch
  4. stem stitches
  5. stem the rose
  6. stem the tide
  7. stem-and-leaf
  8. stem-changing verb
  9. stem-clasping
  10. stem-loop
  11. stem-loops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stem the tide (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-stem the tide.ogg.

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