pit vs stem

pit

verb
  • To remove the stone from a stone fruit or the shell from a drupe. 

  • To make pits in; to mark with little hollows. 

  • To put (an animal) into a pit for fighting. 

  • To return to the pits during a race for refuelling, tyre changes, repairs etc. 

  • To bring (something) into opposition with something else. 

noun
  • A mine. 

  • A hole or trench in the ground, excavated according to grid coordinates, so that the provenance of any feature observed and any specimen or artifact revealed may be established by precise measurement. 

  • The bottom part of something. 

  • Armpit. 

  • A mosh pit. 

  • Formerly, that part of a theatre, on the floor of the house, below the level of the stage and behind the orchestra; now, in England, commonly the part behind the stalls; in the United States, the parquet; also, the occupants of such a part of a theatre. 

  • An undesirable location, especially an unclean one. 

  • A section of the marching band containing mallet percussion instruments and other large percussion instruments too large to march, such as the tam tam. Also, the area on the sidelines where these instruments are placed. 

  • A bed. 

  • A luggage hold. 

  • A shell in a drupe containing a seed. 

  • A hole in the ground. 

  • The emergency department. 

  • The core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it. 

  • A pit bull terrier. 

  • A seed inside a fruit; a stone or pip inside a fruit. 

  • An area at a racetrack used for refueling and repairing the vehicles during a race. 

  • Part of a casino which typically holds tables for blackjack, craps, roulette, and other games. 

  • A trading pit. 

  • A small surface hole or depression, a fossa. 

  • The center of the line. 

  • Only used in the pits. 

  • The grave, underworld or Hell. 

  • The indented mark left by a pustule, as in smallpox. 

  • An enclosed area into which gamecocks, dogs, and other animals are brought to fight, or where dogs are trained to kill rats. 

stem

verb
  • To remove the stem from. 

  • 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 be caused or derived; to originate. 

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

  • To descend in a family line. 

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 pit and stem occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )