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Stem   Listen
verb
Stem  v. t.  (past & past part. stemmed; pres. part. stemming)  To oppose or cut with, or as with, the stem of a vessel; to resist, or make progress against; to stop or check the flow of, as a current. "An argosy to stem the waves." "(They) stem the flood with their erected breasts." "Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books



... chemical cause is thought to be the origin of cancer by other authorities. Neither of these theories has been substantiated and we are still completely at sea in the matter. Cancer appears to be excited sometimes by local irritation, as in the lip by the constant irritation of the hard, hot stem of a clay pipe; cancer of the tongue by the irritation of a rough, sharp tooth. Blows and injuries are also occasional agencies in the development of cancer. Malignant growths not rarely arise from ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... his pilgrim bottle bobbing on his back, hangs himself with all his weight to the branches of a date palm, trying to get the fruit within reach. Meanwhile a bevy of sweet little angels have come to the rescue; they sit among the branches, dragging them down towards him, and even bending the whole stem at the top so that he may get at the dates. Such a thing as this is quite lovely, particularly after the routine of St. Joseph trudging along after the donkey, the eternal theme of the Italians. In Altdorfer's print Christ is ascending ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... exercised the veto power have shown the soundness of these observations. No ordinary President would have staked himself against the Bank of the United States and the two Houses of Congress in 1832. It required President Jackson to confront that power—to stem that torrent—to stay the progress of that charter, and to refer it to the people for their decision. His moral courage was equal to the crisis. He arrested the charter until it could be got to the people, and they have arrested it forever. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... it one seldom thought of any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky would ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... the chief, he takes out his own pipe, fills and lights it, and passes it around after mine. I can smoke my own pipe in turn, but when the Indian pipe comes around, I am nonplussed. It has a large stem, which has at some time been broken, and now there is a buckskin rag wound around it and tied with sinew, so that the end of the stem is a huge mouthful, exceedingly repulsive. To gain time, I refill it, then engage in very earnest conversation, ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... most of the next day in the garden. She helped pick the peas and beans, and stem the currants. She went with Mr. Brown to find the eggs, and held Billy's halter while he drank at the trough. Every day was full of pleasure, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown had just as good a time as the children. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... regarding favourably, and vouchsafing to thy petition our gracious assent, hold it to be a grateful and acceptable thing, that thou shouldst enter that island, to extend the boundaries of the Church; to stem the torrent of crime; to correct morals; to introduce virtue; to augment the Christian religion; and to execute what thy mind may have found good for God's honor, and the country's prosperity. And let the people thereof receive thee honorably, and respect thee as their Lord; ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... remembered passion, and bathed field and fallow in its bloom. It gave to her a kind of aureole, as if her beauty shed a lustre round her. The window where she leaned was separated from the street only by a narrow inclosure, where grew a single sumach, whose stem went straight and bare to the eaves, and there branched out, like the picture of a palm-tree, in tossing plumes. Blossoming honeysuckles wreathed this stem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... felt. The full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air of long summer days, the yellow sheaves glinting in the rays of autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost has made blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,—are images of death but they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting amid the ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of Diana's temple, Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... shovelling it out with her spiked legs. Now and then she would back out of the burrow to reconnoitre, and her alert attitude at such times was very amusing—her antennae drooping towards the burrow and in incessant motion; the abdomen on its long wire stem bobbing up and down at regular intervals, accompanied by a flipping motion of the wings; the short fore legs, one or both, upraised with ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... by hitching a team when I can get them so far excavated that I can turn them down enough to hitch above where I intend to cut them off; by this method I often get almost the entire root. I have three particular points in this; good root, a stem without any blemish, and a rapid growing tree. This is seldom to be got where most people recommend trees to be taken from—isolated ones on the outside of the woods; they are generally scraggy ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... a sea of green life, the climbers of a thousand varieties, some that floated airily, in lacelike filaments, from the tallest branches others that coiled and wound about the trees like huge serpents; and one, the ei-ei, that was for all the world like a climbing palm, swinging on a thick stem from branch to branch and tree to tree and throttling the supports whereby it climbed. Through the sea of green, lofty tree-ferns thrust their great delicate fronds, and the lehua flaunted its scarlet blossoms. Underneath the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... notre bonheur—to our happiness," he declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down the hollow stem. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... specific environment. Closely allied with this are some individuals or groups possessing human traits that are less highly specialized, and hence are adaptable to new conditions. Under new conditions the main stem of development perishes and the budded ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... well irrigated. If the celebrated mission vine grown on one of the sunny slopes overlooking the lovely Montecito valley near Santa Barbara on the blue Pacific had many fellows in the Fathers' vineyards, the above estimate can hardly be an exaggerated one. The stem of this vine, which is four feet four inches in circumference at the ground, rises eight feet before branching out. The branches, under which the country people are fond of dancing, and which are supported by fifty-two trellises, extend over more than 5,000 square feet. This monster vine produces ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... has been likened to the backbone of a man, running, as it does, from stem to rudder. It consists of several timbers scarfed or pieced together, and under it is the shoe, a kind of second keel, but differing from the keel proper in that it is only loosely joined to it, whereas the keel is bolted to the ship's bottom through and ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... of the fierce fighting put up by the French and British to stem the German advance, but the most interesting one that ever came to my notice, came from one of the few American soldiers that participated in the defence. Two weeks after the opening of the battle and at a time when the German advance had been stopped, I came upon this American in a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... Pickering,—and he pulled his watch from his pocket and turned the stem with his heavy fingers. He was short, thick-set and sleek, with a square jaw, hair already thin and a close-clipped mustache. Age, I reflected, was ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... then Mrs. Glegg could economize it, and society would never be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr. Glegg, perceiving this, as he sat down to his milkporridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs. Glegg, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill temper ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... row out to the whale. And then Qujavarssuk came out, and they had already rowed away when Qujavarssuk got his boat into the water. He got it full of water, and drew it up again on to the shore, and turned the stem in towards land and poured the water out, and for the second time he drew it down into the water. And not until now did he begin to look about for rowers. They went out, and when they could see ahead, the strong man ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... ample room, Where Death, with his keen-pointed style, Hath writ the common doom. How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom, And o'er the dead lets fall its dew, As if in tears it wept for them, The many human families That sleep around its stem! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... over the stem-locker of the aeroplane and drew out what Harry instantly recognized as the silk envelope of an experimental dirigible they had built the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... fads did not stop with his food; they extended to his clothes—everything he used, in fact. His baggy knickerbockers ended in leather leggins to protect his pipe-stem shanks; his shirts buttoned all the way down in front and went on like a coat; he wore health flannels by day and a health shirt at night ("Just like my old Aunt Margaret's wrapper," whispered Marny in a stage voice to Pudfut); sported a ninety-nine-cent silver watch fastened to a leather ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... (Gen. 1:11): "Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed," as indicating the production of perfect species, from which the seed of others should arise. Nor does the question where the seminal power may reside, whether in root, stem, or ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Yet doom'd at home to pine and die, Of birthright rob'd, and liberty; Foil'd was the lance he well could fling, Robert[A], who should have been a king; [Footnote A: The eldest son of William the Conqueror was imprisoned eight-and-twenty years by his own brother!] His tide of wrongs he could not stem, His brothers filch'd his diadem. There sleeps the king who aim'd to spurn The daring Scots, at Bannockburn, But turn'd him back, with humbled fame, And Berkley's "shrieks"[B] declare his name. [Footnote B: "Shrieks ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... from stem end of a medium-sized tomato, and scoop out pulp. Slip an egg into cavity thus made, sprinkle with salt and pepper, replace cover, put in a small baking pan, and bake ...
— The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes • Lewis Webb Hill

... as thistle-downs are borne away From the dry stem, went Ellen yesterday. I heard her dying utterance; it was: "I'm coming, Teddy! Bless you, dear Miss Linda!" No priest was by, so sudden was her going. When Blount came in, there was no tenderness In his sleek, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... by some of the early bishops to stem this tide of innovation. Thus, in the fourth, century, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, acknowledging no authority on earth as superior to that of the Bible, protested against the introduction of images in churches, which they held to be a return to Paganism. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... Briton. As you stand under it, its far-away shallow dome, supported on a single column almost white enough to be marble, seems to dwell in the dizziest depths of the blue. Its pale grey-blue boughs and its silvery stem make a wonderful harmony with the ambient air. The Villa Mellini is full of the elder Italy of one's imagination—the Italy of Boccaccio and Ariosto. There are twenty places where the Florentine story- tellers might have sat round on the grass. Outside the villa walls, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... In my clothing I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor's talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an "old salt." I was well on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers. This was a critical ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass

... so cavalierly. Every leaf, stem, and blade of the cancerous grass held me in somewhat the same way Miss Francis' intense eyes did. It wasnt an aesthetic or morbid attraction—its basis was strictly practical. If it could have been controlled—if only the growth could be induced on a modified ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... the imagination with pictures trite yet true. Here the hoary sage of a hundred years lies moldering beneath your foot, and there the young sapling shoots beneath the parent shade, and grows in form and fashion like the parent stem. The towering few, with heads raised above the general mass, can scarce be seen through the foliage of those beneath; but here and there the touch of time has cast his withering hand upon their leafy ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... to the borders where you lately passed Bulging with insolence and fat with pride, You stake your all upon a desperate cast To stem the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... off, and was very contented with my obstinacy. To-day I found the beautifully wrought bodice, which I had carried beyond reach of even the supreme court of appeal, clothing with ridiculous looseness a rag-doll whose head tottered on its stem like an over-ripe plum, and whose legs had no deportment at all: and am sending it off in charitable surrender to Anna to be given, bag and rag, to whichever one of the children she ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... among the plants in the valleys was the madrona or strawberry tree (Ardutus Texana) growing singly here and there. Its beautiful stem and branches, ash-grey and blood-red, are oddly twisted from the root to the top. Now and then, in this world of pine trees, we came upon patches of grama grass. We also observed pinon trees, a variety of pine ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... out the limb which the bees had chosen for their home. As the men were evidently looking after the bees, I waited to watch their operations. One of them first produced a long piece of wood apparently the stem of a small tree or creeper, which he had brought with him, and began splitting it through in several directions, which showed that it was very tough and stringy. He then wrapped it in palm-leaves, which were secured by twisting a slender creeper round them. He then fastened his cloth ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... overwhelming odds. I have in my possession a list of the British and American vessels at the outbreak of that war; and if I were to represent them by something tangible in order to indicate the proportions of each, I would say, taking this box lid for example (illustrating with the stem of a rose upon the cover of a discarded flower box), that if you were to draw a line across here, near the top, you would have sufficient space in the narrow strip above the dividing line to write the names of all the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... heard no further. The iron discipline of West Point was powerless to stem the torrent of cadet enthusiasm at this public mention of their beloved leader of the year gone by. Up sprang the entire corps, and the rafters rang with the thunder of their cheers—a thunder that seemed to redouble rather than dwindle at sight of the silver-haired ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... Gentian Rhizome [root-like subterranean stem] and roots of a yellow-flowered gentian (Gentiana lutea) of southern Europe used as a tonic and stomachic [beneficial ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... a goodly anchor—a bower thick and broad; For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode, And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road— The low reef roaring on her lee—the roll of ocean poured From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board; The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains! But courage still, brave mariners—the bower yet remains! And not an inch to flinch he deigns, save ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... sandstone, white and soft, and occurring in thick beds, much resembles that of the Oolite of Sutherland. We detect in it few traces of fossils; now and then a carbonaceous marking, and now and then what seems a thin vein of coal, but which proves to be merely the bark of some woody stem, converted into a glossy bituminous lignite, like that of Brora. But in beds of a blue clay, intercalated with the sandstone, we find fossils in abundance, of a character less obscure. We spent a full ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... between banks still black and bare, its only companions a clump of daffodils, come out before their time, a few primroses, the first in flower, while here and there burned the blue flame of a violet, its stem bent beneath the weight of the drop of perfume stored in its tiny horn. The Pont-Vieux led to a tow-path which, at this point, would be overhung in summer by the bluish foliage of a hazel, under which a fisherman in a straw hat seemed ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... miles south of Shergotti the bridge spanning a tributary of the Sone is broken down, and no ferry is in operation. The stream, however, is fordable, and four stalwart Bengalis carry me across on a charpoy, hoisted on their shoulders; they stem the torrent bravely, and keep up their strength and courage by singing a refrain. From this point the road becomes undulating, and of indifferent surface; the macadam is badly washed by the soaking monsoon rains, and the low, level country is gradually merging into the jungle-covered ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... across the water at eight o'clock, up went the squadron's bunting in honor of the day, and a pretty picture the ships presented dressed from stem to stern in ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... stem, and simply a block of wood in shape of a top, is spun with a string, but is kept going ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... root) is primarily applied to numbers or groups of plants which it is desired to remove effectually from the soil; a single tree may be uprooted, but is not said to be eradicated; we labor to eradicate or root out noxious weeds. To extirpate (L. ex, out, and stirps, stem, stock) is not only to destroy the individuals of any race of plants or animals, but the very stock, so that the race can never be restored; we speak of eradicating a disease, of extirpating a cancer, exterminating wild beasts or hostile tribes; we seek to eradicate or extirpate ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... and borne in more or less branched clusters, located on the stem on the opposite side and usually a little below the leaves; the first cluster on the sixth to twelfth internode from the ground, with one on each second to sixth succeeding one. The flowers (Fig. 2) are small, consisting of a yellow, deeply five-cleft, wheel-shaped corolla, ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... however attractive it might seem just then, and as to the future, we had every right to expect the best of it. Who cared to think of coming troubles? No one. Therefore the Fram was dressed with flags from stem to stern, and therefore faces beamed at each other as we said good-bye to our home on the Barrier. We could leave it with the consciousness that the object of our year's stay had been attained, and, after all, this consciousness ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... fitting. From my own woods will come in spring (the only safe time to move them) masses of mountain laurel and azalea. From my own pasture fence-line will come red osier, dogwood, with its white blooms, its blue berries, its winter stem-coloring, and elderberry. From my own woods have already come several four-foot maple-leaved vibernums, which, though moved in June, throve and have made a fine new growth. There will be, also, a shadbush or two and certainly some ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... sad close for a record which began with such high hope, and tells of such strenuous, self-sacrificing effort. The last page of many a reformer's history has been, like Nehemiah's, a sad account of efforts to stem the ebbing tide of enthusiasm and the flowing tide of worldliness. The heavy stone is rolled a little way up hill, and, as soon as one strong hand is withdrawn, down it tumbles again to its old place. The evanescence of great men's work makes much ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 'Your son, Mrs. Dowey—he has got five days' leave.' She shakes her head slightly, or perhaps it only trembles a little on its stem. 'Now, now, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... was silent for some moments, puffing slowly at a pipe, and then he removed the stem from between his teeth ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations—trying to fight both fate and Nature—standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea—one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... heartnut tree holds the interest of its owner closely during that time when the nuts resulting from the racemes of blossoms are steadily increasing in size. I have seen as many as sixteen nuts on one stem and doubtless, there sometimes are more. The owner of such a tree, at least if he is at all like me, will proudly exhibit it to all comers during the spring and summer seasons. And then, at harvest ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... midst towers the supporting stem, thick and black, its bark gnarled and corrugated as ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... closed by the chill of night, after the sun shines on them straighten themselves all open on their stem, so my weak virtue became, and such good daring hastened to my heart that I began like one enfranchised:—"O compassionate she who succored! and thou courteous who didst speedily obey the true words that she addressed to thee! Thou by thy words hast so disposed my heart with desire of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... dreaming where I passed, Like flower blown from careless stem; So still I dared to touch at last Her white ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan

... mirror in our baggage. There was a mirror in the shack, however—small but good—and we quickly made ourselves tidy at least, and Kate even went to the length of curling her bangs—bangs were in style then and Kate had long, thick ones—using the stem of a broken pipe of Mr. Hopkins's for a curler. I was so tired that my vanity was completely crushed out—for the time being—and I simply pinned my bangs back. Later on, when I discovered that Mr. Lonsdale was really the younger son of an English earl, I wished I had curled them, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... screamed Captain Jerry, and all jumped just in the nick of time. Down came the stick, to strike the rail and shatter it like a pipe stem, and then lay over the deck and over the ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... grape-vine, in garden, by roadway, or on hillside, with its vine-stock, branches, blossom, and fruit, tells of the Father's ideal for men, a unity of life with Himself, and with each other. And every bunch of grapes hanging on one stem, with its many in one, tells of that same ideal, the concord of love with the Father ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... begotten Where its Red Sons fought and died, With traditions unforgotten Strives to stem Oblivion's tide; Tells the mighty, who, like ocean, Whelm the native stream, how they First in far dim days' commotion, Wrestling, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... one of the most ancient groups, and includes all flat stitches, of which the distinguishing mark is, that they pass each other, overlap, and blend together. "Stem," "twist," "Japanese stitch," and "long and short" or "embroidery stitch," belong to this class, to which I propose to restore its original title of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... right angles with the principal, and composed also in the form of the upper portion of a gothic window. To the right of the virgin, and of the plate, is the "staggering" date abovementioned. It is thus: M.cccc.xxx. This date is fixed upon the stem of a tree, of which both the stem and the branches above appear to have been scraped, in the copper, almost white—for the sake of introducing the inscription, or date. The date, moreover, has a very suspicious look, in regard to the execution of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... along between us and the height. On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the stem looked stunted between them. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... that a current of response flows in the plant from the relatively more to the relatively less excited. A theoretically important experiment is the following: A thick stem of plant stalk was taken and a hole bored so as to make one contact with the interior of the tissue, the other being on the surface. After a while the current of injury was found to disappear. On exciting the stem by taps or torsional vibration, a responsive current was observed ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged jewels, dart from the boughs,—and—and—a huge ground snake slid like a dark ribbon, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... object is the long range of warehouses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, with their little trading steamers moored alongside. These vessels bear the signs of traffic with a savage people in the high boarding nettings which guard them from stem to stern, and which are in their more solid parts pierced for musketry. Here, too, you see a queer little old steamboat, the first that ever vexed the waters of the Pacific Ocean with its paddle-wheels. And ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... answer very well," replied the captain, as he applied his shoulder to the stem of the craft to ascertain how heavily she rested upon the beach. "Now, do you know whether there is any person on board ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem. God knows that from that moment I was the victim of pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensation. I needed none—and oh! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... favorite bench in front of the tower when we were startled by a shout from above us. Looking up directly, we saw Morgan half in and half out of his narrow window In the seventh story, gesticulating violently with the stem of his long meerschaum pipe in the direction of the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... said Roxholm thoughtfully as he turned the stem of his glass, keeping his eyes fixed on it as though solving a problem for himself. "A barbaric fancy that a woman needs a master. She who is strong enough is her own conqueror—as a man ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... escape,.... and thought of the crocodiles,.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of the basilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escape women?.... and he struck out valiantly for shore.... when he was brought to a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noose thrown over him by some friendly barbarian, and himself hauled on board, amid the laughter, praise, astonishment, and grumbling of the good-natured crew, who had expected him, as a matter of course, to avail himself ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... a most ancient form, which existed at least as far back as the era of the shallow oolitic seas, x or y thousand years ago. A tiny curled Spirorbis, a Lepraria, with its thousandfold cells, and a tiny polype belonging to the Campanularias, with a creeping stem, which sends up here and there a yellow-stalked bell, were all the parasites we saw. But the sargasso itself is a curious instance of the fashion in which one form so often mimics another of a quite different family. When fresh out of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... perceive to what goal he was tending. He had taken this direction aimlessly; and yet it was as if his feet had acted of their own accord, without the guiding impulse of the mind. From a long, straight stem a banner of smoke floated heavy and luminous against the softer luminosity of the sky. He knew now where he was going and what he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... ash stem he was leaning against, the men looked up, he saw the well-known face, and called out "Jeph! Jeph!" But some of the others laughed, Jeph frowned and shook his head, and marched on. Stead was disappointed, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pool below the outfall, slid out as quietly as I could and kept myself submerged up to my chin, clutching my cylinder with one hand, pulling myself clear of the drain and keeping my head out of the drainage by holding to the stem of an alder bush growing by ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... whatever mischief is going on, as if after the all the will of Heaven may be made amenable to human energy. It is only when an inveterate gambler or votary of the opium-pipe has seen his last chance of solace in this life cut away from under him, and feels himself utterly unable any longer to stem the current, that he weakly yields to the force of his destiny, and borrows a stout rope from a neighbour, or wanders out at night to the brink of some deep pool ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... little humming-bird! Every eye blesses thee; Sunlight caresses thee, Forest and field are the fairer for thee. Blooms, at thy coming stirred, Bend on each brittle stem, Nod to the little gem, Bow to the humming-bird, frolic and free. Now around the woodbine hovering, Now the morning-glory covering, Now the honeysuckle sipping, Now the sweet clematis tipping, Now into the bluebell dipping; ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... return home, made no attempt to stem the course of events; and, on the evening of the day after the battle on the Clare side, the drums of the besieged beat a parley, and Generals Sarsfield and Waughup went out and had a conference with Ginckle. A cessation of arms was concluded for the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... the common parlance of the crew, frequently designated the "cradle," and it merits the appellation, for in a vessel at sea and under a breeze it is generally "rocked" about, either in long sweeps from side to side, or backward and forward from stem to stern, according to the ship's motion. It is the pleasantest part of the ship for one who is inclined to solitude, for once upon it, you cannot see aught of what is going on below, unless you look over the edge or down ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... the ship. It is but justice to observe that the moment he was out of soundings and away from the influence of her ladyship, Sir Hercules reinstated my father, and gave him back his rating as coxswain. My father was indeed the smartest and best seaman in the ship; he could do his work from stem to stern—mouse a stay, pudding an anchor, and pass a gammoning, as well as he could work a Turk's head, cover a manrope, or point a lashing for the cabin table. Besides which, he had seen service, having fought under Rodney, and served at ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... the door of her indulgence all the disturbances which the fiery temper of Roland Graeme had already occasioned, or might hereafter occasion, in the family. "I would," he said, "honoured Lady, that you had deigned to be ruled by me in the outset of this matter, sith it is easy to stem evil in the fountain, but hard to struggle against it in the stream. You, honoured madam, (a word which I do not use according to the vain forms of this world, but because I have ever loved and honoured you as an honourable and elect lady,)—you, I say, madam, have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... to devote a few pages of this work to a brief detail of the lives of some of those men who first stepped forward, regardless of the bigoted power which opposed all reformation, to stem the tide of papal corruption, and to seal the pure doctrines of the gospel with their blood. Among these, Great Britain has the honor of taking the lead, and first maintaining that freedom in religious controversy which astonished Europe, and demonstrated ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... way in which the bark-collectors have hewn down the trees, often digging up the roots themselves, the production has greatly decreased. When the root is allowed to remain, and the stem hewn as near as possible to it, an after-growth is produced, which, in the milder regions, in the space of six years again produces bark. In the colder regions twenty years are required before a tree is fit to ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... rose on the other hand imparts to me its joy in life. One feels that it is perfectly happy swaying on its stem, for does not everybody say simply, "It is a pity to cut it," and thus affirm and preserve the happiness of ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... mill, and which Homer or Shakspeare could not reform for me in words? The leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue east for their back-ground, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, contribute something ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... majestic deportment; of princely manners; of a remarkable talent for the management of all business, whether private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,—he might be said to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem. But the present lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast, not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his progenitors. Before his time, every Head of the House had done something for it; even the most frivolous had contributed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... she declared. "My father always said that a straight stem, with the bowl at a right angle, was the correct shape. You evidently ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... day that a family is to gather in their cabbage, which they salt and lay up for the winter season, the women invite their female friends and neighbours to come and assist them. On the evening before, they cut the cabbages from the stem, and pull off the outside leaves and earth that may be adhering to them. On the grand day, at the house where the cabbages are collected, the women assemble, dressed in their most brilliant manner, and armed with a sort of cleaver, with a handle in the centre, more or less ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... makes a great to-do with his feet on the road but somehow gets nowhere. At the end of each stroke of her piston she seemed to stop for an instant and then with a wheeze and a clank from below, and a violent tremor from stem to stern, started all over. Her paddle-wheels kicked up alarming looking rollers behind, but with it all she travelled no faster than a steam canal-boat. Not that it mattered; the children got just as much ozone as on ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... it could not make the least difference which way her head was turned, as she was on a lee shore, and there was no steam to work her off. The captain also ordered the passengers first to run aft, in the hope, by removing the pressure from the vessel's stem, to make her float: this failing to produce the desired effect, he then ordered them to run forward. All the exertions of the captain, the crew and passengers united were unavailing. The ill-fated vessel stuck still faster in the sands, and all ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... was leaning in an attitude characteristically immobile against the landing carriage of his machine. The Comte de Chalons stood on one side, pulling at his mustache and staring from one to the other. Monsieur Power chewed a grass stem and smiled in a ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... soluble in water; in appearance it strongly resembles gamboge, but has not the property of staining. The plant that produces it is low and small, with long grassy leaves; but the fructification of it shoots out in a singular manner from the centre of the leaves, on a single straight stem, to the height of twelve or fourteen feet. Of this stem, which is strong and light, like some of the reed class, the natives usually make their spears; sometimes pointing them with a piece of the same substance ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... mountain, far as Weissland, where, Conceal'd behind eternal walls of ice, Another people speak another tongue. They built the village of Stanz, beside the Kernwald; The village Altdorf, in the vale of Reuss; Yet, ever mindful of their parent stem, The men of Schwytz, from all the stranger race That since that time have settled in the land, Each other recognize. Their hearts still know, And beat ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... some connection between the brain and intelligent behavior. While the spinal cord and brain stem vary according to the size of the body, and the cerebellum with the motility of the species of animal, the size of the cerebrum varies more or less closely with the intelligence of the species. It does vary also with bodily size, as illustrated by the whale and elephant, which have the largest ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... of these prefixes. The Min. has three of these almost identical in force. I should suppose that I would, with as much material, find greater similarity in the other languages, but the only one I have been able to trace at all generally is Dak yu. This merely converts the stem into a verb without changing its meaning. Dak y is nearly always represented in the allied languages so far as I have observed by r, d, l or n; so that I find it in Min. du (ru, lu, nu), Iowa, Mandan, and ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson

... indescribable effect of inward force and true inspiration, a curious stir went through the crowd at times, as a great wind sweeps over a corn field, lifting the broad leaves to the light and testing the strength of root and stem. People looked at one another with a roused expression; eyes kindled, heads nodded involuntary approval, and an emphatic, "that's so!" dropped from the lips of men who saw their own vague instincts and silent opinions strongly confirmed ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... china bowl of his pipe, a pipe with a long cherry stem and a curved mouthpiece, pressing the tobacco down with his thumb and thinking: No. I sha'n't see her again. Don't want to. I will give her a good start, then go in chase—and send an express boat ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... not inspire them with fear or religious horror. The ships which they launched upon it were built on the model of the Nile boats, and only differed from the latter in details which would now pass unnoticed. The hull, which was built on a curved keel, was narrow, had a sharp stem and stern, was decked from end to end, low forward and much raised aft, and had a long deck cabin: the steering apparatus consisted of one or two large stout oars, each supported on a forked post and managed by a steersman. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel. For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern. While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized, gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow planks from the inky lighters and in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... leaves. That is a tracing of the leaf of a hybrid English walnut and heartnut. He sent it along as evidence of its vigor of growth. This large compound hybrid leaf measured 27 inches from tip of the leaf to the bottom of the last leaflet, exclusive of the stem which was 5 inches long. Many of the larger leaflets measured 5 x 9 inches, shape, oblong ovate, edges of leaf, serrate, total width of compound leaf, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association



Words linked to "Stem" :   watercraft, orient, tubing, bole, gynophore, corn stalk, caudex, receptacle, cane, pin, hematopoeitic stem cell, brain stem, prow, tube, theme, stem cell, withdraw, rootstock, internode, turning, bow, vessel, cladophyll, sporangiophore, radical, blue stem, stalk, key, bulb, stemmer, hold, brain-stem, stem lettuce, leaf node, petiolule, signifier, descriptor, funiculus, front, root word, flower stalk, culm, beanstalk, staunch, stem-winder, tree trunk, petiole, slip, fore, wineglass, embryonic stem-cell research, axis, onion stem, cladode, nail, carpophore, rhizome, tuber, scape, grip, cylinder, base, filament, stanch



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