# stemming

Pronunciation: say "STEM-ing" /ˈstɛmɪŋ/

## Verb

1. Present participle and gerund of stem. — present participle and gerund of stem
   - Simple: The -ing form of stem. Use it after am, is, are, was or were, or to name the action.
   - _Disputes stemming from the old contract delayed the sale._
   - _She was stemming the tide of complaints with daily updates._

## Noun

2. A computational process that strips inflectional, and sometimes derivational, affixes from words to reduce them to a common base form.
   - Simple: A way of cutting words down to their base part by removing endings like '-ing' or '-ed'.
   - _Applying stemming reduced the vocabulary size dramatically before the model was trained._
   - _The library's index relied on stemming to group word variants under one entry._
3. A search-engine technique that includes a term's inflected forms in a query, so a search for one word also matches its variants.
   - Simple: A search feature that also finds the different forms of a word you type in.
   - _The search engine's stemming returned results for 'compute,' 'computed,' and 'computing' alike._
   - _Enabling stemming broadened the query and surfaced documents the exact phrase had missed._
4. A climbing technique of bridging between two holds with the hands or feet, pushing against each in opposing directions to brace oneself in position.
   - Simple: A climbing move where you push against two surfaces in opposite directions to hold yourself in place.
   - _The corner pitch demanded careful stemming between two near-vertical faces._
   - _He relied on stemming to bridge the chimney where there were no footholds._
5. Forward movement made against a water current, especially against the flow of a tide.
   - Simple: Moving forward against the flow of water, especially against the tide.
   - _Hours of stemming the flood tide left the crew exhausted._
   - _Her steady stemming against the river's flow kept the vessel off the rocks._

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/stemming (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).