stem

The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors.

Where ye may all that are of noble ſtemm / Approach, and kiſs her ſacred veſtures hemm.

While I do pray, learn here thy stem / And true descent.

A branch of a family.

This is a stem / Of that victorious stock.

A branch of a family.

An advanced or leading position; the lookout.

Wolsey sat at the stem more than twenty years.

The above-ground stalk (technically axis) of a vascular plant, and certain anatomically similar, below-ground organs such as rhizomes, bulbs, tubers, and corms.

After they are shot up thirty feet in length, they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or the stem.

He had placed her upon the grass by now, her back resting against the stem of a huge tree. At her question he stepped back where he could the better see her face.

To remove the stem from.

to stem cherries; to stem tobacco leaves

To be caused or derived; to originate.

The current crisis stems from the short-sighted politics of the previous government.

Weight stigma often stems from an idea that patients are at fault for their body size.

To descend in a family line.

To direct the stem (of a ship) against; to make headway against.

Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.

To hit with the stem of a ship; to ram.

As when two warlike Brigandines at sea, / With murdrous weapons arm'd to cruell fight, / Doe meete together on the watry lea, / They stemme ech other with so fell despight, / That with the shocke of their owne heedlesse might, / Their wooden ribs are shaken nigh a sonder […]

To stop, hinder (for instance, a river or blood).

to stem a tide

[They] stem the flood with their erected breasts.

To move the feet apart and point the tips of the skis inward in order to slow down the speed or to facilitate a turn.

To use a stance with the feet spread apart, bracing them in opposite directions against the two walls of a chimney or dihedral.