stemmed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of stem.

   The committee stemmed the rising costs by freezing new hires.

   Many of the town's problems stemmed from years of poor planning.

   Note

   One spelling serves several unrelated verbs, and the construction tells them apart. Followed by from, it is intransitive and means "originated": the dispute stemmed from a misunderstanding. With a direct object it is transitive: a ship stemmed the current, a cook stemmed the strawberries. Only the transitive uses form a passive (the fruit was stemmed). Nothing can be "stemmed from" by someone.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a stem, whether the stalk of a plant or the slender support beneath a drinking glass.

   The bar served its cocktails in delicate stemmed glassware.

   She arranged a vase of stemmed blossoms in the center of the table.

   Oppositestemless

   Note

   Usually the second half of a compound that says what kind of stem: long-stemmed roses, or a brown-stemmed silver-bowled pipe in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers (1836). Before a noun, these compounds are hyphenated. On its own, it separates glasses and flowers that have a stem from those that lack one. It takes more and most, not -er and -est. It shares its spelling with the verb's past form, so context decides.

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