stemming

Stem \Stem\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Stemmed}; p. pr. & vb. n.
   {Stemming}.] [Either from stem, n., or akin to stammer; cf.
   G. stemmen to press against.]
   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." --Shak.
   [1913 Webster]

         [They] stem the flood with their erected breasts.
                                                  --Denham.
   [1913 Webster]

         Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age. --Pope.
   [1913 Webster]
    

stemmer
stemming

   <information science, human language> A program or {algorithm}
   which determines the morphological root of a given inflected
   (or, sometimes, derived) word form -- generally a written word
   form.

   A stemmer for English, for example, should identify the
   {string} "cats" (and possibly "catlike", "catty" etc.) as
   based on the root "cat", and "stemmer", "stemming", "stemmed"
   as based on "stem".

   English stemmers are fairly {trivial} (with only occasional
   problems, such as "dries" being the third-person singular
   present form of the verb "dry", "axes" being the plural of
   "ax" as well as "axis"); but stemmers become harder to design
   as the morphology, orthography, and {character encoding} of
   the target language becomes more complex.  For example, an
   Italian stemmer is more complex than an English one (because
   of more possible verb inflections), a Russian one is more
   complex (more possible noun declensions), a Hebrew one is even
   more complex (a {hairy} writing system), and so on.

   Stemmers are common elements in {query} systems, since a user
   who runs a query on "daffodils" probably cares about documents
   that contain the word "daffodil" (without the s).

   ({This dictionary} has a rudimentary stemmer which currently
   (April 1997) handles only conversion of plurals to singulars).

   (1997-04-09)