🇬🇧 Stem meaning: English Vocabulary Flash Card

To stem means to make a liquid stop moving or coming out, especially blood. If someone gets a cut and it’s bleeding, another person might press on it with a clean cloth to stem the bleeding. When you stem something, you are blocking or slowing down the flow so it doesn’t keep leaking or spilling out.

Dad stemmed the bleeding on my head and said, “You and the doorframe need to stop trying to share the same space.”

The coach stemmed the bleeding on my elbow and wrote “gravity” as the reason for my injury on the accident report.

I stemmed the bleeding on my thumb while my little brother asked if I was turning into a zombie yet.

The doctor stemmed the bleeding so fast that I barely had time to practice my dramatic fainting routine.

The paramedic stemmed the bleeding and told me that your body actually has special cells called platelets whose whole job is to help stem bleeding all by themselves.

At the fence a farmer cut his thumb. His wife pressed a shirt to stem the blood, cupped the wound to stem the spray, held pressure to stem the flow, wrapped a strip to stem the leak, then tied it tight to stem the drip. After a long minute the bleeding slowed and he smiled.

This word is at the C2 level, which means it represents the highest mastery of English. It’s often used in specialized or highly formal contexts and helps you communicate with precision and subtlety, much like a native speaker.

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