descend vs stem

descend

verb
  • to be derived (from) 

  • To move toward the south, or to the southward. 

  • To fall in pitch; to pass from a higher to a lower tone. 

  • to proceed by generation or by transmission; to happen by inheritance. 

  • To go down upon or along; to pass from a higher to a lower part of 

  • To pass from a higher to a lower place; to move downwards; to come or go down in any way, for example by falling, flowing, walking, climbing etc. 

  • To enter mentally; to retire. 

  • To come down, as from a source, original, or stock 

  • To come down to a lower, less fortunate, humbler, less virtuous, or worse, state or rank; to lower or abase oneself 

  • To make an attack, or incursion, as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence. 

  • And on the suitors let thy wrath descend. 

  • To pass from the more general or important to the specific or less important matters to be considered. 

stem

verb
  • To be caused or derived; to originate. 

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

  • To ram (clay, etc.) into a blasting hole. 

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

  • To descend in a family line. 

  • To remove the stem from. 

noun
  • A lesbian, chiefly African-American, exhibiting both stud and femme traits. 

  • A branch of a family. 

  • A component on a bicycle that connects the handlebars to the bicycle fork. 

  • The penis. 

  • A slender supporting member of an individual part of a plant such as a flower or a leaf; also, by analogy, the shaft of a feather. 

  • A premixed portion of a track for use in audio mastering and remixing. 

  • A person's leg. 

  • The vertical or nearly vertical forward extension of the keel, to which the forward ends of the planks or strakes are attached. 

  • A vertical stroke marking the length of a note in written music. 

  • A narrow part on certain man-made objects, such as a wine glass, a tobacco pipe, a spoon. 

  • A part of an anatomic structure considered without its possible branches or ramifications. 

  • A winder on a clock, watch, or similar mechanism. 

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

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

  • A vertical stroke of a letter. 

  • A crack pipe; or the long, hollow portion of a similar pipe (i.e. meth pipe) resembling a crack pipe. 

  • The main part of an uninflected word to which affixes may be added to form inflections of the word. A stem often has a more fundamental root. Systematic conjugations and declensions derive from their stems. 

  • An advanced or leading position; the lookout. 

How often have the words descend and stem occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )