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Stem   /stɛm/   Listen
Stem

noun
1.
(linguistics) the form of a word after all affixes are removed.  Synonyms: base, radical, root, root word, theme.
2.
A slender or elongated structure that supports a plant or fungus or a plant part or plant organ.  Synonym: stalk.
3.
Cylinder forming a long narrow part of something.  Synonym: shank.
4.
The tube of a tobacco pipe.
5.
Front part of a vessel or aircraft.  Synonyms: bow, fore, prow.
6.
A turn made in skiing; the back of one ski is forced outward and the other ski is brought parallel to it.  Synonym: stem turn.



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"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books



... An't please your Worship's Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a fellow as ever went between stem and stern of a ship, and can hand, reef, steer, and clap two ends of a rope together, as well as e'er a He that ever crossed Salt-water; but I was taken by one George Bradley (the name of the Judge) a notorious Pirate, and a sad rogue as ever ...
— Pirates • Anonymous

... long neck down in proportion to the rest of the body and trim the arms and legs off to the proper length. Remember that one inch of the neck of the dolls must be inserted in the head and allow for that in cutting the long stem. ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard

... colonel and Bruce dismounted and tried to stem the tide of fleeing coolies; but it was no more effective than blowing against the wind. They found, however, an abandoned pack containing cartridge cases, and they filled their pockets, calling to Ramabai and Pundita to follow ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... are like yon crimson gem, The pride of all the flowery scene, Just opening on its thorny stem; An' she has twa ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... schools, has been, to a great extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. It is hard to say where history ends in them and religion and politics begin; for history, religion, and politics grow on one stem in Ireland, an eternal trefoil. 'He was a great historian,' it is said; 'for every book he'd get hold of, he'd get it read out to him.' And a neighbour tells me: 'He used to stop with my uncle that was a hedge schoolmaster in those times in Ballylee, and that was very ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... trembling prayer soft whispered, A father's song sung over thee— When from the parent stem ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... industrial plants, foreign trade organizations, and financial institutions; (c) the 65% share in trade of the USSR and other CEMA countries; and (d) the detailed control over economic details exercised by Party and state. Once integrated into the thriving West German economy, the area will have to stem the outflow of workers and renovate the obsolescent industrial base. After an initial readjustment period, living standards and quality of output will steadily rise toward West ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... without conversing in speech. He pointed at things to observe; he shared her satisfied hunger for the solitudes of the dumb and growing and wild sweet-smelling. He would not let a sorrowful thought backward or an apprehensive idea forward disturb the scene. A half-uprooted pine-tree stem propped mid-fall by standing comrades, and the downy drop to ground and muted scurry up the bark of long-brush squirrels, cocktail on the wary watch, were noticed by him as well as by her; even the rotting timber drift, bark and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... walking, and on our telling her that we did, she said that she would point out to us a near way home. She then pointed to a path up a hill, telling us we must follow it. After making her a present we bade her farewell, and passing through a meadow crossed a brook by a rustic bridge, formed of the stem of a tree, and ascending the hill by the path which she had pointed out, we went through a cornfield or two on its top, and at last found ourselves on the Llangollen road, after ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... a heavy curtain of sleep upon the senses. Noodle, beginning to feel drowsy, stretched out his hand in haste to the nearest flower, lest in a little while he should be no more than a part of the giant's dream. 'O beloved Heart of Melilot!' he cried, and crushed his fingers upon the stem. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight. Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... from the vicious circle of the last seventy years, except by returning to the principle which she then repudiated, and by admitting, that if States would live, they must preserve their organic connection with their origin and history, which are their root and their stem; that they are not voluntary creations of human wisdom; and that men labour in vain who would construct them without acknowledging God ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... but I have thought of a plan. See, we will tie the churn to this blackberry bush stem, and then I will take hold of one end of the stem, and wiggle it up and down, and the churn will go up and down, too, on the bush, just as it did when you jumped with it; and then maybe the butter ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... good advice, and Captain Skinner took it; while the old man sat quietly in his saddle, with Steve Harrison at his side, as if they two were quite enough to stem the torrent of fierce, whooping Apaches which was now sweeping down upon ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard

... truer. I signaled back to Olson: "Let 'er go!" The U-33 trembled from stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube. I saw the white wake leap from her bow straight toward the enemy cruiser. A chorus of hoarse yells arose from the deck of our own craft: I saw the officers stand suddenly erect in the boat that was ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... win the battle. She was now fearfully close to the shore, but her bow had been turned into the very eye of the sea, and one could almost feel the tension of her steel muscles as she seemed to spring to the encounter. The billows that split themselves in quick succession on her sharp stem burst into shooting geysers three ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... pot or tumbler in which a young plant is growing, also a piece of pasteboard large enough to cover the top of the pot or tumbler; cut a slit from the edge to the centre of the board, then place it on top of the pot, letting the stem of the plant enter the slit. Now close the slit with wax or tallow, making it perfectly tight about the stem. If the plant is not too large invert a tumbler over it (Fig. 21), letting the edge of the tumbler rest on the pasteboard; if a tumbler is not large enough use a glass ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... that only the most desperate resistance on the part of the Chancellor would be able to stem the tide of hate and keep America out of the war. On January 7th the American Chamber of Commerce and Trade in Berlin gave a dinner to Ambassador Gerard and invited the Chancellor, Dr. Helfferich, Dr. Solf, Minister of Foreign Affairs Zimmermann, prominent German bankers and business ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... it was a Sunday morn, And many a man ne'er saw its eve, Though ale and leeks by old wives borne The bruised and wounded did relieve. 'Twas Sunday morn, when Svein calls out, 'Stem to stem your vessels bind;' The raven a mid-day feast smells out, And he comes croaking up ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... closely pursued by allied cavalry and tanks, which for the first time fought in a combination that proved irresistible. The tanks used were of a new small variety, known as "whippets," which rapidly wiped out the machine-gun nests with which the enemy sought to stem the tide of the victorious onrush. Some American troops fought with the British in their advance and gained high ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... appears that the animal had for about half an hour amused itself by crossing and recrossing the bow, and then at last suddenly turned and came straight for the vessel, striking us about ten feet from the stem. It struck with such force as to send a considerable quantity of spray on deck. The only other instance that has occurred here lately was in the case of the S.S. Dalhousie, when about twelve miles from Kurrachee; it was in September of last year, and the Bombay papers had a full account ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... ask him personally. I understand he intends honouring you with a visit this afternoon. He should be here shortly, unless he happens to be drunk. You are his friend, Peregrine; talk to him as such, endeavour to stem the tide of his folly, if only for his young wife's sake. Curb his madness if you can, it should be an occupation for your ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... you cannot read the deep deep feelings of the heart, or judge how little words have the power, like the charms we read of, to heal its wounds and wrench asunder the chains that bind it for ever and ever! The ivy, when torn from the stem to which it clings, may wither and die, but it cannot be attached to another trunk, however skilful the hand of the gardener who would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... planted this old apple-tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he. Born in the rude, but good, old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... to the calyx or hull; some are long and pointed, with long, tapering necks. These usually grow upon tall stems. They are, indeed, of the slim, linear kind. Your corpulent berry keeps close to the ground; its stem and foot-stalk are short, and neck it has none. Its color is deeper than that of its tall brother, and of course it has more juice. You are more apt to find the tall varieties upon knolls in low, wet ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... feeling that the world was on a wrong path, in spite of Roman glory and luxury. If they could not correct the course of things, they could at least renounce the luxury. That seemed like an effort to stem the tide. More commonly the sentiment was less defined and less morally vigorous. It was only world sickness. Cases occurred of individuals who renounced marriage, or lived in it without conjugal intimacy.[2163] The Stoics, Cynics, Neopythagoreans, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... as this the two women in the Lockerby house preached little daily sermons to each other, until comfort grew out of the very stem of their sorrow, and they began to congratulate each other that "puir Davie was at ony rate outside the glamour o' ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the temples of China and recently found by Wilson growing on the mountains of Hupeh. The earlier parti-colored bark changes to chalky white on old trunks, by which the tree is recognized from a great distance. The stem of the tree is often multiple by the vertical growth of some of the lower branches. It is very hardy and is cultivated in Europe and America, although these cultivated trees are not yet of sufficient age to show ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw

... but we had a constant current setting us to the eastwards, which indeed had been the case ever since we left Ternate. In the afternoon, the wind came round to the northward, a brisk gale, and we stood west to stem the current, bearing for a large island called Doy, where we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long, slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vise, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... button-hook and dropping in coffee beans till the little songster shows by its gratified air that it is full. A little time may be well spent among the flowers and bulbs of the apartment, clipping here a leaf and here a stem, and removing the young buds and bugs. For work among the flowers, a light pair of rather long scissors, say a foot long, can be carried at the girdle, or attached to the etui and passed over the shoulder with a looped cord so as to fall ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... international: China seeks to stem illegal migration of tens of thousands of North Koreans escaping famine, economic privation, and political oppression; North Korea and China dispute the sovereignty of certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers and a section of boundary around Paektu-san (mountain) ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... another, which by my fingers' touch casts a shadow—the Crookes shadow, of the stem ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... beautiful. The steep bank is mostly covered with trees sprouting from the rocky shelves, and below is a fringe of trees between the road and the river. A little way from the town, the driver pointed out, in the midst of the stream, a long island of loose stones and pebbles, without a leaf or stem of herbage. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... lie becalmed, in the same relative position to one another, having changed from it scarce a cable's length. And stem to stern, just as the last breath of the breeze, blowing gently ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... a vain attempt to turn about, in the hope that he might gain the lee of the point and effect a landing. But it was too late. He quickly found that it was quite impossible to stem the wind, and he had no choice but ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... described in a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" for June, 1675, under the title of a "New Essay instrument." In this paper the author refers to a glass instrument exhibited many years before by himself, "consisting of a bubble furnished with a long and slender stem, which was to be put into several liquors to compare and estimate their specific gravity." Boyle describes this glass bubble in a paper in "Philosophical Transactions," vol. iv., No. 50, p. 1001, 1669, entitled, "The Weights of Water in Water with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate. Along the top of the Ertak, from amidships to within a few feet of her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the Ertak down against the inner skin. A foot or more—it ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... Charpentier, our host, has a most undeniably pretty daughter. She is the caissiere, fortunately, and may be seen—and admired—at any time. We will see her as we go out. And speaking of beauties," he continued, turning the stem of his wine-glass slowly around, "you have asked no word of Mademoiselle d'Azay—or, I should say, Madame la Marquise de ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... ingenious efforts of British secret agents in Berlin, who kept Darnborough informed of all in progress, was Lord Bracondale able to stem the tide and guide the ship of state into ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... castles in topmost parts of the towns herself fashioned the car, scudding with lightest of winds, uniting the interweaved pines unto the curving keel. That same first instructed untaught Amphitrite with sailing. Scarce had it split with its stem the windy waves, and the billow vext with oars had whitened into foam, when arose from the abyss of the hoary eddies the faces of sea-dwelling Nereids wondering at the marvel. And then on that propitious ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... judging from the lovely example in the Brera. The group of figures is strikingly suggestive of Da Vinci, but the quiet, rural pasture in which the Virgin sits is Luini's own. In the distance is a thick clump of trees, finely drawn in stem and branch. At one side is a shepherd's hut with a flock of sheep grazing near. The child Jesus reaches from his mother's lap to play with the lamb which the little St. John has brought, a motif similar to Raphael's Madrid picture, and perhaps due, in ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... seamen, seized the captain, tied his hands behind his back, hauled him out of his berth, and forced him on deck. The boatswain, William Cole, was ordered to hoist out the ship's launch, which measured twenty-three feet from stem to stern, and into this open boat Bligh, together with eighteen of the crew, who were or were supposed to be on his side, were thrust, on pain of instant death. When they were in the boat they were "veered round with a rope, and finally cast adrift." Bligh ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... 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, ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... below the piston. So that it can be started or stopped quickly, the opening and closing of the throttle valve, i (Fig. 2), is effected by a single pulling movement upon the handle, I, and this draws out the valve horizontally. For this end the lever is pivoted upon the extremity of the valve stem, and ends in a bar engaging with a fork which acts as its fulcrum. This fork is cast in one piece with the plug, J, which closes the opening through which the valve is put in place, as shown in detail in Fig. 8. To prevent the lever from spinning ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... the larger and rarer yellow-bellied species. One autumn I caught one of these fellows in the act of sinking long rows of his little wells in the limb of an apple-tree. There were series of rings of them, one above another, quite around the stem, some of them the third of an inch across. They are evidently made to get at the tender, juicy bark, or cambium layer, next to the hard wood of the tree. The health and vitality of the branch are so seriously impaired by them that ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... feeling for her—infatuation apart—had received a distinct stimulus from their talk about his mother and the impression made on her by the photograph he had brought with him, as promised. And if Mrs Elton was a Brobdingnagian thorn on the stem of his Rose, the D.C.'s patent pleasure and affectionate allusions to the girl atoned ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... far-off wonders in her eyes— And in her hand a golden tulip flower. For her the tender firstling tendrils grew;— Rich crop or meagre, what is that to you? Instead of it we get an after crop They kick the tree for, dust and stalk and stem,— As hemp to silk beside ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... German people in a state of almost hopeless depression. They saw their territory laid waste by the victorious Napoleon, and their thrones occupied by rulers of Gallic or Italian preferences. They had striven very sluggishly to stem the current of national subjection and humiliation. The star of France being in the ascendant, the Rhine was no longer their friendly ally and western limit. No stage in the history of a people is more gloomy and calls more loudly for sympathy than when national prestige is gone, and dignities ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... graciously, and raising a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material, looked at Mr Bunker through these with a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... Polish troops refused to go back into the fighting line to help stem the Bolo attack. Peremptory order brought two of their Colt automatics up to the line where for forty-five minutes they engaged the enemy, but again retired to the rear and assisted only by firing ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... the cutter's painter to the stem of the other boat which projected above the gunwale, and letting out the slack of the rope so as the boat should not come too close, Mr Osborne giving some order to that effect, they took her in tow, and in a few strokes ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... time at no more than two hundred yards, the whale charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently, so that she bore down upon the schooner's bow from starboard. Her back hit the stem and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale, yet the Mary Turner sat down till the sea washed level with her stern-rail. Nor was this all. Martingale, bob-stays and all parted, as well as all starboard stays to the bowsprit, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... in a corner of their hut. [Footnote: This plant appears to me to be a species of the Psoralea esculenta, or Indian bread-root, which it resembles in description, excepting that the root of the above is tuberous, oval, and connected by long filaments. The largest tubers are farthest from the stem of the plant.] Hector suggested that these roots would be far better late in autumn or early in the spring than during the time that the plant was in bloom; for he knew from observation and experience that at the flowering season the greater part of the nourishment ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... dwelling. An artist would hardly have noticed a slender, dry, leafless stalk which traces a faint line, as you may see, along the front of our neighbor's house next the corner. That would be nothing to him,—but to us it marks the stem of the honeysuckle-vine, which we remember, with its pink and white heavy-scented blossoms, as long as we remember the stars ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On the stem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flower of artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house had not succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to an artificial variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... iron windlasses to which the chains were attached were large and ponderous; but these were not strong enough to withstand the weight of two crabs with steel-armoured roofs, enormous engines, and iron hull. In less than a minute one davit snapped like a pipe-stem under the tremendous strain, and immediately afterward the windlass to which the chain was attached was torn from its bolts, and went crashing overboard, tearing away a portion of the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... Chia was so distressed that she clasped Pao-y in her embrace. "You child of wrath," she exclaimed. "When you get into a passion, it's easy enough for you to beat and abuse people; but what makes you fling away that stem of life?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... to be nearly weather-proof by this time; but, in spite of a warm riding-cloak and a casing of chamois leather from neck to ankle, I felt sometimes chilled to the marrow; my lips would hardly close round the pipe-stem, and even while I smoked the breath froze on my moustache, stiff and hard. My flask was full of rare country whisky, fiery hot from the still; but it seemed at last to have lost all strength, and was nearly tasteless. I would have given anything for a brisk trot or rattling gallop to break ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... shows a more ambitious attempt, and is considered one of the finest specimens known. It was worked by Elizabeth Mackett, 1696. It is on white linen with ten rows of floral patterns worked with coloured silks in cross, stem, and satin stitches, with some portions worked separately and applied. Five rows of white satin stitch, two rows of alphabet letters in coloured silks, and four rows of exquisite punto in aria lace patterns ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... attempted to stem the man's flow of words. It was plain that he did not know Mr. Vanstone, even by sight—otherwise he would never have committed the error of supposing that Magdalen took after her father. Did he know Mrs. Vanstone any better? He had left Miss Garth's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... width, is filled with a string of eight horses, all of them proceeding at a trot, and following each other to the right. Over each horse two birds fly in the same direction. The horses' tails are extraordinarily conventional, consisting of a stem with branches, and resembling a conventional palm branch. Outside this zone there is an exterior and a wider one, which is bounded on its outer edge by a huge snake, whose scaly length describes ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... tumultuously with the extreme of love, and which has been riven with the excess of woe, will shortly pant no more. The mind which has been borne down by the irresistible force of passion,—which has attempted to stem the torrent, but in vain, and, since the rage of it has passed away, has been left like the once fertile valley which has been overflown, a waste of barrenness and desolation,—will shortly cease from its wearied action. In a few brief days I must appear in the presence of an offended, yet merciful ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... treasury is a late fifteenth-century silver-gilt chalice with elaborately worked knop and stem; on the knop are saints under canopies, and angels with outspread wings emerge from scroll-work round the base of the cup. Also a monstrance of the same period with very elaborate and beautiful architectural ornament and figures of angels in adoration. In two ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... before there was root enough made below to nourish them. There was only one possible end for such premature growth—namely, withering in the heat. No moisture was to be drawn from the shelf of rock, and the sun was beating fiercely down, so the feeble green stem ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Harold's companions were brow-beaten into declaring that he led them into all kinds of raids, and when Talcott tried to stem this tide by objection, the prosecution rose to say that the testimony was competent; that it was designed to show the dangerous character of the prisoner. "He is no gentle and guileless youth, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... tire, they hacked with their axes—the sharpest the raven had ever seen—they dug and hauled, and at last they actually got the huge stem turned over on its side, so that the whole tough net-work of roots stood straight up ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... that had rolled away in the darkness, buried themselves in the earth, and took root, and sprang up, as the old woman knew they would do. There at the castle gate they bloomed, a strange, strange flower, for on every stem hung a row of little ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the banks white stars among the grass. Petals delicately white in a whorl of rays—light that had started radiating from a centre and become fixed—shining among the flowerless green. The slender stem had grown so fast it had drawn its own root partly out of the ground, and when I tried to gather it, flower, stem and root came away together. The wheat was springing, the soft air full of the growth and moisture, blackbirds whistling, wood-pigeons nesting, young oak-leaves out; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... leaders were boldly proclaiming such treason to the Union how could he hope to stem the tide that had set ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests of evergreen oaks, the Quercus Ilex, called also the holm oak. It has abundance of dark-green ovate leaves, mostly prickly at the margin; the acorns are oblong on short stalks; the stem grows to the height of 80 ft.; the wood is dark-brown and hard, weighing 70 lbs. the cubic foot, while the same of the Quercus ruber or British oak weighs only 55 lbs., and the tree attains a vast age. The cork oak, Quercus suber, grows either singly among ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black

... near at hand, is a revelation to you of all the mysteries. An ant, bending like a wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect on its way through some desert path over there ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... our ship into some place where we might make and hang a new rudder to carry us home. This device, was however to little purpose; for, when we had fitted it and put it out into the sea, it did so lift up with the strength of the waves, and so shook the stem of our ship, as to put us in great danger, so that we were glad to use all convenient haste to get the mast ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... looked as though he would never wake. Farther out old Mahon's face was upturned to the sky, with the long white beard spread out on his breast, as though he had been shot where he sat at the tiller; and a man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on the gunwale. The East looked at them ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... balcony stood flower-pots, on which were heads having asses' ears, but the flowers in them grew just as they pleased. In one pot pinks were growing all over the sides, at least the green leaves were shooting forth stalk and stem, and saying as plainly as they could speak, "The air has fanned me, the sun has kissed me, and I am promised a little flower for next ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... fifty more from Athens stem the main, Led by Menestheus through the liquid plain. (Athens the fair, where great Erectheus sway'd, That owed his nurture to the blue-eyed maid, But from the teeming furrow took his birth, The mighty offspring of the foodful earth. Him Pallas placed amidst her wealthy fane, Adored with sacrifice ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... red, purple, Indian-yellow, generally with two black stripes, the poorer with a strip of old carpet. These they wound about their bodies, folding them across the chest, the arms hugged together inside in such a way as to bring a corner across the mouth and nose, leaving their pipe-stem legs below, and wandered thus dismally about in the frequent spurts of cold rain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnants of "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior to peon ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... russet and of white. "Shall you object to his wearing these a good, deal?" she asked Burns. He took up one small sample, running his fingers into it. "I should think he might put his toes through one of those in an hour or two," he suggested. "His legs are pretty thin. Do you think pipe-stem legs in short socks, to say nothing of bruises and scratches, ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... shrinking form closer to her bosom. I would have given the world to have learned that girl's previous history. I am sure accident must have thrown her amongst her present associates, as I have seen a lily broken from its stem by a sudden gust of wind, and flung to wither and die amid rude and hardy weeds. In a few hours the party left the boat, and I never saw either her or them again; but, till this day, whenever any incident of a domestic nature wakens old-time dreams, pleasant memories of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... magistrates, very likely. But the police ought to prevent and stem disorder. Now a resuscitation, Monsieur, is a thing so unheard of as to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... bending above almost every structure, whether hut or public building;—everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In the court-yards you may occasionally catch sight of some splendid palm with silver-gray stem so barred as to look jointed, like the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... ferment, and this triumph of the Lancastrian party, would be extremely attached to that cause, and ready to second every suggestion of their leaders. That order, being an yet of too little weight to stem the torrent, was always carried along with it, and served only to increase the violence which the public interest required it should endeavor to control. The duke of Lancaster, therefore, sensible that he should be entirely master, began to carry his views to the crown itself; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... the sails, and the lugger lay rolling heavily in the waves, as the frigate bore down upon her with a white roll of water on her stem. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... of pipe used in most ceremonials today has a bowl with its axis at right angles to the stem, but so far as I have studied ancient Pueblo pipes this form appears to be a modern innovation.[158] To determine the probable ancient form of pipe, as indicated by the ritual, I will invite attention ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... dark-green leaves spread perhaps ninety feet above his head, he reached the nearer boughs with an omei, a very long stick with a forked end to which was attached a small net of cocoanut fiber. Deftly twisting a fruit from its stem by a dexterous jerk of the cleft tip, he caught it in the net, and lowered it to the kooka on the ground ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... transformed into the pupa or nymph, which is distinguishable principally by the shortness of its antennae and the presence of wing pads. After a brief existence the pupa emerges from the ground, and, holding on to a plant stem by means of its powerful front legs, sets free the perfect insect through a slit along the median dorsal line of the thorax. In some cases the pupa upon emerging constructs a chimney of soil, the use of which is not known. In ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... line when she turned her back, and the perfect working of all her main attachments, that of some wonderful finished instrument, something intently made for exhibition, for a prize. He knew above all the extraordinary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded flower, which gave her a likeness also to some long, loose silk purse, well filled with gold pieces, but having been passed, empty, through a finger-ring that held it together. It was as if, before she turned to him, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... beam touched it, the steel disappeared in one flare of radiance—as he swung the projector in one flashing arc from the stem to the stern there was nothing left. Loring, swinging the ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... most earnestly, that I had taken hold of something smaller, but I didn't like to let go. I might get nothing else. I gave another jerk, but it was of no use. I felt that I couldn't hold my breath much longer, and must go up. I clutched the stem of the thing with both hands; I braced my feet against the bottom; I gave a tremendous tug and push, and up I came to ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... Stem—the Darkness and the Light unite with injurious effects—all things become solid," (frozen?), "and the Darkness destroys the growth ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... his cabin, the husband stopped to light his pipe. See, gentlemen, how the Supreme Arbiter played His hand. The man attempted to unscrew the stem, and the stem broke. In the wilderness you must smoke. Smoke is your company. It is voice and companionship to you. There were other pipes at the settlement, ten miles away; but there was also another pipe at the cabin, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... he'd have been in our work—running preliminary surveys! He just naturally knew the way across country, and he just naturally knew how to set it down. On hides, with a burnt stick—on the sand with a willow twig—in the ashes with a pipe stem—that's how his maps grew. The Indians showed him; and ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... was covered with oiled paper and grass mats. There was absolutely no furniture. The walls were covered with clean white paper. Each man in the room was smoking a pipe, which consisted of a brass bowl and a reed stem over three feet long. All wore long white robes, though one of the occupants had hung ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike

... dart that adorneth her tresses, The deep, dewy grass of her forehead. So kind to my keeping she gave it, That good comb I shall ever remember! A stranger was I when I sought her —Sweet stem with the dragon's hoard shining—" With gold like the sea-dazzle gleaming— The girl ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... the Blunder grounded—and she hath airned her name, for the good of the dwellers in this village—is the chine of the Pig; and he hath a double back, with the outer side higher than the inner one. She came through a narrow nick in his outer back, and then plumped, stem on, upon the inner one. You may haul at her forever by the starn, and there she'll 'bide, or lay up again on the other back. But bring her weight forrard, and tackle her by the head, and off she comes, the very next fair tide; for she ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... was the last now presented, two more men, with their clubs, displayed their dexterity. The dances were succeeded by wrestling and boxing; and one man entered the lists with a sort of club, made from the stem of a cocoa-leaf, which is firm and heavy; but could find no antagonist to engage him at so rough a sport. At night we had the bomai repeated; in which Poulaho himself danced, dressed in English manufacture. But neither these, nor the dances in the daytime, were so considerable, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... Tyrrhenian sea beside Sarzana. On a May-day of sunshine like the present, the Taro is a gentle stream. A waggon drawn by two white oxen has just entered its channel, guided by a contadino with goat-skin leggings, wielding a long goad. The patient creatures stem the water, which rises to the peasant's thighs and ripples round the creaking wheels. Swaying to and fro, as the shingles shift upon the river-bed, they make their way across; and now they have emerged upon the stones; and now we lose them in a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... found in it many plants of V. thapsus and lychnitis as well as thirty-three plants intermediate in character between these two species. These thirty-three plants differed much from one another. In the branching of the stem they more closely resembled V. lychnitis than V. thapsus, but in height the latter species. In the shape of their leaves they often closely approached V. lychnitis, but some had leaves extremely woolly on the upper ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... an obvious effort, he followed her over a narrow, trampled path through the rasped palmettos. They approached the dwelling from behind the orange grove; and, coming suddenly to the porch, surprised an incredibly thin, grey man in the act of lighting a small stone pipe with a reed stem. He was sitting, but, seeing Woolfolk, he started sharply to his feet, and the pipe fell, shattering ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... pathway for it, Saying to it, "Run in this way!" From the red stone of the quarry With his hand he broke a fragment, Molded it into a pipe-head, Shaped and fashioned it with figures; From the margin of the river Took a long reed for a pipe-stem, With its dark green leaves upon it; Filled the pipe with bark of willow, With the bark of the red willow; Breathed upon the neighboring forest, Made its great boughs chafe together, Till in flame they burst and kindled; And erect upon the mountains, Gitche Manito, the mighty, Smoked ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... Marius over the Ambrons and Teutons, local antiquaries believing that the name of Montmeyran is from Mons Jovis Mariani.[89] The road lies through the bright cool green of wide plantations of the silkworm mulberry,[90] with its trim stem and rounded head; and, in the more open parts of the valley, walnut trees of size and shape fit for an ornamental park in England relieve the monotony. The nearer hills are covered to the top with vines, and the higher and more distant ranges have a naked and thoroughly ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... come if you wanted to. Jim Harvey's getting it up.... He wants to keep company with me this winter." Ada was a little nervous about this, but as she stole a glance at Peter's face as he lay biting at a stem of grass, she grew quite comfortable again. "But I don't know as I will," she said. "I don't care very ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... of his victory, and the greatness of his services, the marriage of his son with the princess Eudoxia was not an unreasonable object of ambition. But his greatness made him unpopular with the debauched court at Ravenna, and he was left without a sufficient force to stem the invasion of the Huns. Aquileia, the most important and strongly fortified city of Northern Italy, for a time stood out against the attack of the barbarians, but ultimately yielded. Fugitives from the Venetian territory sought a refuge among the islands which ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... Lower Cambrian age at Bray Head, Wicklow, Ireland, some very remarkable fossils, which are well known under the name of Oldhamia, but the true nature of which is very doubtful. The commonest form of Oldhamia (fig. 29) consists of a thread-like stem or axis, from which spring at regular intervals bundles of short filamentous branches in a fan-like manner. In the locality where it occurs, the fronds of Oldhamia are very abundant, and are spread over the surfaces of the strata in tangled layers. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him to live again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet plucked from the parent stem; this angel, over whose growing graces and earliest development they had watched with such passionate tenderness; this only child, incapable of despising her father or of laughing at his want of education, so much was she ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... they are intended for, or the customs of those that make them. Those meant for fishing consist only of three or five logs of wood about eight feet long, the middle one longer than the rest, especially forewards, and the others gradually shorter, forming a kind of stem or prow to cut the waves. The logs are joined to each other's sides by wooden pegs and withes, or twisted branches of trees. Such as are intended for carrying merchandise are made in the same manner and shape, but the raft consists of twenty or thirty great trunks of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... the first symptoms of Mallare's madness. He had brought the little monster home from an amusement park one summer night. Goliath had been standing doubled up, his pipe stem arms hanging like a baboon's, his enlarged black head lifted and his furious eyes staring at a Wheel ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... growth of what shall be a mature and fruitful vine; but is there no miracle, even in the sense of inscrutable processes, in that development? Is there less of real miracle in the so-called natural course of plant development—the growth of root, stem, leaves, and fruit, with the final elaboration of the rich nectar of the vine—than there was in what appears supernatural in the transmutation of water into wine ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... were overpowering, and we meant to trace the cause. Sure enough one of the cacti, with wide-spreading leaves which trailed on the ground for several yards, proved to be the seat of the virulent fumes. None of us had ever met such a plant before. A vast bulb was suspended on a thick stem, which rose from the heart of the leathery leaves, and this we prepared to examine intently, though we were all but overcome by the foul ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... or plant, for I know not which to call it, the giant aloe, which is called in Spanish, pita, and in Moorish, gursean. It rises here to a height almost as magnificent as on the African shore. Need I say that the stem, which springs up from the middle of the bush of green blades, which shoot out from the root on all sides, is as high as a palm-tree; and need I say, that those blades, which are of an immense thickness at the root, are at the tip sharper ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... grappled with the British right, overthrew it after a fierce struggle, and drove it back upon the centre. In vain Frazer[52] tried to stem the tide of defeat by throwing himself into the thickest of the fight. "That man," said Morgan, pointing him out to his marksmen, "must die." A rifle bullet soon gave the gallant Scot his death wound, and he was ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... sit here on the step over the council-fire of my pipe. Besides, when there are not markets and flowers, and only a straight-down, early-afternoon sun, I shall find it a more noble usage of time to see of my drama another scene. The actors are good;" and he pointed with his pipe-stem down to the garden. "And this," he said, "is the mute chorus of the play," indicating a kitten which had made prey of the grand-dame's ball of worsted, and was rolling it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... meantime, the third juror explained his vote for acquittal. He was a large, heavy-jowled man with sandy mustache and a vacancy among his upper teeth into which a pipe-stem fitted neatly. He was the superintendent of an apartment building ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... of cold beef and game, drank a great glass of home-made beer, and then smoked a long pipe with intense satisfaction. One o'clock in the morning came, then two, then three, and Mynheer Jacobus, taking the stem of his pipe ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... because it was peculiar to the family of David during its obscurity; whilst Jerusalem, on the contrary, belonged to their regal condition,—and the Messiah [Pg 513] was to be born in the fallen tabernacle of David, to be a rod from the cut off stem of Jesse, Is. xi. 1. That this reference also was in the view of the prophet, seems to be evident from a comparison of iii. 12, and iv. 8, 9, 14. At all events he considered the family of David as ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... Gabriel Rossetti. (Pope Alexander VI. regards the dancing children, Lucrezia plays the viol, Cesar beats time with his stiletto on the stem of a wine glass.) Permission ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... braes o' bonnie Doon, The winding banks o' Ayr, Where flutters many a small bird gay, Blooms many a flow'ret fair. But dearer far to me the stem That once was Calder's pride, And blossoms now the fairest flower Within the vale ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... metal on the camera, and his fingers were seared as though with a red-hot iron. Perhaps our greatest annoyance on this voyage was the frequent deprivation of tobacco, that heavenly solace on long and trying journeys. For at even 40 deg. below zero nicotine blocks the pipe-stem, and cigar or cigarette freezes firmly to the lips. The moustache also forms a mask of solid ice, and becomes an instrument of torture, so much so that on the third day out on the Lena ours were ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... cultivation and care until the trees reach maturity. During the first summer an occasional watering may be required in long periods of drought. In many instances buds will form and start along the stem of the tree, or near the roots. These should be rubbed off the moment they ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... papers or see the popular films. The most successful papers are those that touch the passions of the mob. I proved this one week last spring. Judges were beginning to introduce the "cat" for criminals, as a means to stem the crime wave. I sat down and wrote an article on the subject, pointing out that this was a going back to the days of barbarism when lunatics were whipped behind the cart's tail. I made a strong plea for the psychological ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... natural curiosities in the kingdom: an immense arbutus tree, unfortunately blown down, but yet vegetating. One branch, which parts from the body near the ground, and afterwards into many large branches, is six feet two inches in circumference. The General buried part of the stem as it laid, and it is from several branches throwing out fine young shoots: it is a most venerable remnant. Killarney, the region of the arbutus, boasts of ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... mass the words of the prophet Isaiah: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... the path through blood, Out of the horrors of this holocaust. Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood, And he who stops to argue now is lost. Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic words Can stem the tide, ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... sense of that world of beauty which lies among stems and branches, twigs and leaves. Painfully, but with happy pains, he traced the branch joint by joint, curve by curve, as it spread from the parent stem and tapered to its last delicate twigs. It was like following a river from its source to the sea. But to that sea of summer sky, in which the final ramifications of his branch were lost, Jan did not reach. He was abruptly ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... moment when, taken from the cross, our Lord would have fallen at the feet of His most holy mother if two angels did not support Him in their arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow, lifting both her widespread arms to heaven while on the stem of the tree above is written this legend: 'Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa.' The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried by the White Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterward deposited in the Church of Santa Croce ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... barking of a watch-dog, coming from some distant farm, made them shiver with a melancholy fright. And Ramuntcho was to carry with him in his exile, to preserve later with a desolate attachment, a certain stem of grass plucked from the garden negligently and with which he had played ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... as a glance of recognition. Meanwhile Fairfax and Sanchez paced restlessly back and forth, conversing earnestly as they smoked, only occasionally pausing to contemplate the shore past which we were gliding in silence, the only sound the ripple of water at our stem. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... though a religious man and a Monarchist, looked at Esther with an expression of tender pity. The girl was as lovely as a lily drooping on its stem. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... covered, but white and bare save for a number of small, framed engravings—a view of Boston Harbour, Queene Anne's Tomb, and some black line satirical portrait prints. A stone fireplace, ready for lighting, had iron dogs and fender, and a screen lacquered in flowery wreaths on a slender black stem. At one side stood a hinge-bound chest, its oak panels glassy with age; on the other, an English set of drawers held a mirror stand and scattered trifles—razors and gold sleeve-buttons, a Barcelona handkerchief, candlesticks and flint, a twist of common, pig-tail tobacco; while from ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... hawk-eyes held a twinkle in reserve. "There was a man I knew, a mighty hunter before the Lord—and before the Game Laws." The thin brown fingers of the muscular hard-palmed hand played with the stem of a wineglass as the sentences came out, crisp and pointed. "Well, this is the story of a mistake, and an old shikari of your experience can find even more excuses for it than I can ... but perhaps I ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... dialect, language, branch, stock—it goes without saying—are purely relative terms. They are convertible as our perspective widens or contracts.[127] It would be vain to speculate as to whether or not we shall ever be able to demonstrate that all languages stem from a common source. Of late years linguists have been able to make larger historical syntheses than were at one time deemed feasible, just as students of culture have been able to show historical connections between ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... on both sides of the keel, seven or eight feet from the beginning of the stem, the sides of the brig were frightfully torn. Over a length of at least twenty feet there opened two large leaks, which it would be impossible to stop up. Not only had the copper sheathing and the planks disappeared, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... where you have been ostriches must be as thick as chickens here at home." Laughing, she went out, and returned in due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror, and looked at ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... in low shrubs along the plains, stretching its flexible branches over the ground; Mimosa terminalis (the sensitive plant) was very plentiful, and more erect than usual; a species of Verbena, with grey pubescent leaf and stem, was also abundant. The night breeze had been exceedingly strong during the last four days. At the camp of the 4th of February my companions shot twenty-one pigeons (Geophaps scripta), and five cockatoos; a welcome addition to our scanty meals. For a considerable time previous, I had reduced our ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portion of the stem on which the words and letters 'Son and H-' were yet plainly legible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon the floating fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze springing up in the night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no doubt that all surmises as to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... shirt-sleeves. His breeches were of the ample sailor-cut, and hung from suspenders as intricate as a ship's rigging. His shirts were spotlessly white, and of very fine linen. A short black pipe was always in his mouth, or sticking its clay stem ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... wild. There was one exception to this sweeping ban. Foxgloves, though undoubtedly guilty on the last count, he not only spared, but loved; and when the shrubbery was being thinned, he stayed his hand and dexterously manipulated his bill in order to save every stately stem. In boyhood, as he told me once, speaking in that tone that only actors and the old-fashioned common folk can use nowadays, his heart grew "proud" within him when he came on a burn-course among the braes of Manor that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thoughts of the future. Now, as he waited there, a broad gulf, not a crossable river, seemed to stretch before him, not alone financial but ethical,—a sweeping troublous torrent, the force of which he could neither stem nor even explain to himself,—verily the surging of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... he and his two companions set out, rowing up the estuary of the Salmon until the current became too swift to stem in that manner. Then landing, they rigged a "bridle" for the skiff, fitted their shoulders to loops in a ninety-foot tow rope, and began to "track" their craft up against the stream. It was heartbreaking work. Frequently they were waist-deep in the cold water. Long "sweepers" with tips awash ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... rejecting mere comforts that spring From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by 150 brute: In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit. Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree—how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... means rare in twins, which had already been displayed on one or two occasions of their sickness—their organizations seemed liable to the same sensations, the same simultaneous accidents, like two flowers on one stem, which bloom and fade together. The sight of so much suffering, and so many deaths, had accelerated the development of this dreadful disease. Already, on their agitated and altered countenances, they bore the mortal tokens of the contagion, as they came forth, each on her own side, from the two ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay pipe, hardly three inches long, which a soldier held ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... at this stage of Harriet's religious experience that Dr. Beecher was called to Boston to stem the rising tide of Unitarianism, with its easy notions about conviction of sin and other cardinal elements of a true faith. To be thrown into the fervors of a crusade was just the experience which Harriet's heated brain did not need. Her life at this period was divided between ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... a contact with nature which otherwise might never be developed. Where angels and archangels overawe by their omnipotence, the microscopic fairies who can sit singing upon a mushroom and dangle from the swaying stem of a bluebell, carry the thoughts down the scale of life to the little and really important things. A sleepy child will rather believe that the Queen of the Fairies is acting sentry upon the knob of the bedpost than that an ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Mokuri, is seen in other parts of the country, where long-continued heat parches the soil. This plant is an herbaceous creeper, and deposits under ground a number of tubers, some as large as a man's head, at spots in a circle a yard or more, horizontally, from the stem. The natives strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to be beneath. They then dig down a foot or so, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... of a flower that lonely grew, Apart, with trembling stem and pale of hue; The mountain-world of cold and strife Gave little life And ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... was the height of war frenzy. Since then, the document went on, passion had abated sensibly and a number of well-intentioned men who had been swept onward by the current were fast coming to their senses, while others were already sane, eager to stem it and anxious for ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove. That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked nations—a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... round an apple-tree of ten years' standing, dig a trench one or one and a half foot deep, at about the same distance from the stem that the branches extend; let this trench be about one foot wide; then put at the bottom one and a half inch depth of guano, dig it well in, and incorporate it with the soil; then cover up carefully and press the earth down. The effect of this application will unquestionably ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... divinely beautiful, for all were lovely beyond the average. One could understand the pride and joy of a father or lover when he looked upon the young girl's face. The slender body made one think of the tall lily stem, crowned with that flower named the face and glorious head. Strangely enough they seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after long pain. Plainly death had ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... entirely efficient we must go a little further into the construction of a steam-engine. The pellet in the tube has no connection with the outside, and we can get nothing from it. So we give it a stem, thus: and when we do so we change it into a piston and its rod. Where it passes through the stopper at the end of the tube it must pass air- (or steam-) tight. Then as we push the piston back and forth we ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... me. When every one else had given all they had, ought I alone to keep back my treasure? Ought I to grudge to God one of the gifts which, like all the rest, I had received from him? At this last thought I plucked the flower from the stem, and took it to put at the top of the Tabernacle. Ah! why does the recollection of this sacrifice, which was so hard and yet so sweet to me, now make me smile? Is it so certain that the value of a ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... from stem to stern, among boxes, bales and barrels, around the machinery, by the chimneys, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... mentioned in 2 Chronicles 4:7, Zechariah 4, and Revelation 1, appear to have been of one pattern. A stem, with a bowl bearing a centre and six branches—three on each side. Of these there were ten in the temple. The prophets Zechariah and John, in their holy visions, saw but one, with its seven lamps secretly supplied by living olive trees. These lights 'are the eyes of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a marvel how it managed to hang there, and smoked a pipe so black that the most powerful imagination could hardly conceive of its ever having been white, and so short that it seemed all head and no stem. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... reaction. A Committee of Public Safety was appointed by the Convention, and endeavoured to sweep away every being who either seemed adverse to equality, or who might inherit any claim to rank. The queen was put to death nine months after her husband; and the Girondins, who had begun to try to stem the tide of slaughter, soon fell under the denunciation of the more violent. To be accused of "conspiring against the State" was instantly fatal, and no one's life was safe. Danton was denounced by Robespierre, and perished; and for three whole years the Reign of ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and his staff, the gorgeous attaches, and the artists and correspondents, with valets, orderlies, stenographers, and secretaries. Somewhere, far to the rear, one ship was filled with newspaper men from stem to stern. But wily Grafton was with Lawton and Chaffee, the only correspondent aboard their transport. On the second day, as he sat on the poop-deck, a negro boy came up to ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... palms supply in their unfolding leaves a cabbage-like edible. Among edible roots the caladium is the chief. Rubber is obtained as the sap of a wild creeper; gutta-percha from trees of several varieties; camphor from pockets in the stem of the camphor tree (DRYOBALANOPS AROMATICA). But of all the jungle plants those which play the most important parts in the life of the people are the many species of the rattan and the bamboo; without them more than half the crafts ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... whose progress through the spinous scrub already mentioned was very slow. The wood of this acacia was hard and of a dark brown colour. We gathered some stones of the fruit: and we brought away its stem also. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... diameter of seedlings was smaller. There was little difference in seedlings from nuts planted one and two inches deep but they were noticeably larger than those planted 3 and 4 inches deep. Planting nuts with the radicle end down invariably produced seedlings with undesirable crooks in the root-stem region which made them unsuitable for grafting. Planting nuts radicle end up produced straighter seedlings than planting them on their side. The latter method was the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... entering into the construction of house-frames, screens, many household articles, mats, pipes, and sails. The camphor-tree, which is seen in such abundance, is a grand ornament in the landscape, lofty and broad-spread. The camphor of commerce is extracted from both the stem and the roots of the tree, which, being cut into small pieces, are subjected ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... these boats, no sails, no oars. They were "steam launches," and were destined for a night attack on the flotilla which I had just passed. Their crews were covered nearly from stem to stern by iron bullet-proof awnings, which, as well as the boats, were painted black. The engines were so constructed as to make the least possible amount of noise, and when speed was reduced no sound was heard save a dull ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... reading all this Western travesty of an Eastern work that M. Cazotte, a typical litterateur, had prepared for caricaturing the unfortunate Habib by carefully writing up Fenelon, Rousseau, and Richardson; and had grafted his own ideas of morale upon the wild stem of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... exactly help on the progress of self-control, that at this point Dingee came in, bearing in both hands a lovely basket of hot-house grapes and nectarines, themselves specimens of perfection, with a long wreathing stem of wonderful white orchids laid across its other treasures. Dingee evidently enjoyed his share in the business, for his white teeth ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... do the biggest ones!" flashed Margaret, hotly, but she could not stem the tide of ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell



Words linked to "Stem" :   signifier, linguistics, corm, watercraft, cane, caudex, stem vowel, originate in, cornstalk, leafstalk, stipe, stem-winder, check, plant organ, slip, front, funicle, stem turn, tree trunk, hold, tobacco pipe, beanstalk, take away, tube, handle, petiole, node, funiculus, orient, flower stalk, sporangiophore, handgrip, cylinder, scape, anchor, haulm, leaf node, axis, word form, withdraw, hematopoeitic stem cell, phylloclade, key, cutting, remove, phylloclad, nail, culm, brain stem, vessel, bole, cladode, tubing, wineglass, descriptor, stock, tuber, ground tackle, turning, trunk, rootstock, petiolule, carpophore, stem blight, rhizome, rootstalk, embryonic stem-cell research, halm, internode, pipe, filament, pin, take, gynophore, cladophyll, grip, turn, branch, fore, corn stalk, receptacle, bulb, form



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