Word.ws English Dictionary

stemming

stemming is the present participle and gerund of stem.

Noun

stemming (countable and uncountable, plural stemmings)

  1. Movement against a current, especially a tidal current.
  2. A process for removing the inflexional, and sometimes derivational, affixes from words.
  3. (broadly) To include a term's inflections as part of a search engine's search.
  4. The technique of bridging between two holds with hands and/or feet, applying forces to each in opposing directions in order to brace oneself in position.

Meaning of stem

Verb

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

  1. To remove the stem from.
    • to stem cherries; to stem tobacco leaves
  2. To be caused or derived; to originate.
    • The current crisis stems from the short-sighted politics of the previous government.
    Synonyms:
    to be due to, to arise from
  3. To descend in a family line.
  4. To direct the stem (of a ship) against; to make headway against.
    • Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 41, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 199
  5. (obsolete) To hit with the stem of a ship; to ram.
    • 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 […]1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.ii
  6. To ram (clay, etc.) into a blasting hole.

See all 29 meanings of stem

Forms of stemming

pluralstemmings

Phrases with stemming

Words that rhyme with stemming

Questions about stemming

What does stemming mean?
Stemming means movement against a current, especially a tidal current.
What is stemming the present participle and gerund of?
Stemming is the present participle and gerund of stem.
What part of speech is stemming?
Stemming is a noun.
What is the plural of stemming?
The plural of stemming is stemmings.

Words near stemming in the dictionary

  1. stemmery
  2. stemmes
  3. stemmier
  4. stemmiest
  5. stemminess
  6. stemming
  7. stemming the rose
  8. stemming the tide
  9. stemmings
  10. Stemmler
  11. Stemmlers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stemming (page history and authors); stem (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: “stemming.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stemming. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.