flow vs stem

flow

verb
  • To cover with water or other liquid; to overflow; to inundate; to flood. 

  • To rise, as the tide; opposed to ebb. 

  • To move as a fluid from one position to another. 

  • To have or be in abundance; to abound, so as to run or flow over. 

  • To move or match smoothly, gracefully, or continuously. 

  • To hang loosely and wave. 

  • To arrange (text in a wordprocessor, etc.) so that it wraps neatly into a designated space; to reflow. 

  • To allow (a liquid) to flow. 

  • To discharge excessive blood from the uterus. 

  • To proceed; to issue forth. 

  • To cover with varnish. 

noun
  • The ability to skilfully rap along to a beat. 

  • The sequence of steps taken in a piece of software to perform some action. 

  • A formalization of the idea of the motion of particles in a fluid, as a group action of the real numbers on a set. 

  • A morass or marsh. 

  • The amount of a fluid that moves or the rate of fluid movement. 

  • A mental state characterized by concentration, focus and enjoyment of a given task. 

  • The movement of a real or figurative fluid. 

  • The emission of blood during menstruation. 

  • A flow pipe, carrying liquid away from a boiler or other central plant (compare with return pipe which returns fluid to central plant). 

  • Movement in people or things characterized with a continuous motion, involving either a non solid mass or a multitude. 

  • The rising movement of the tide. 

  • Smoothness or continuity. 

stem

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

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