spindle vs stem

spindle

noun
  • The fusee of a watch. 

  • A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord. 

  • Any marine gastropod with a spindle-shaped shell formerly in one of the three invalid genera called Fusus. 

  • A rotary axis of a machine tool or power tool. 

  • A long and slender stalk resembling a spindle. 

  • Any marine univalve shell of the genus Tibia; a spindle stromb. 

  • Certain of the species of the genus Euonymus, originally used for making the spindles used for spinning wool. 

  • A rod used for spinning and then winding natural fibres (especially wool), usually consisting of a shaft and a circular whorl positioned at either the upper or lower end of the shaft when suspended vertically from the forming thread. 

  • A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards. 

  • A sleep spindle. 

  • A rod which turns, or on which something turns. 

  • An upright spike for holding paper documents by skewering. 

  • A cytoskeletal structure formed during mitosis 

  • a dragonfly, calque of Swedish slända (dragonfly/spindle), introduced by New Sweden settlers. 

  • A muscle spindle. 

  • A plastic container for packaging optical discs. Bulk blank CDs, DVDs, and BDs are often sold in such a package. 

verb
  • To make into a long tapered shape. 

  • To impale on a device for holding paper documents. 

  • To take on a long tapered shape. 

stem

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

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

verb
  • 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. 

  • To remove the stem from. 

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