What is the origin of the idiom stem the tide?
Are there any opportunities for you to use stem the tide, a phrase that stems a trend?
idiom uses stem in the sense of stopping, restrict or restrain. Mid-1800s But
Merriam-Webster’s Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) has as one of its three discrete entries for stem as a verb: stem,Vt. stemmed; stemming
stemmen to keep a course, fr. (1: to make headway against) (as an adverse tide, current, or wind) 2: to check or go counter to (something adverse) A Google Books search turns up fairly
early instances of stem (the tide) both in both the “make progress against a tide” and the “block the advance of a tide” senses.
From Will Dampier, A Voyage to New Holland &c. In the Year 1699 (1703):
We were forced four Leagues back again, and took particular Notice of a Point of Land that looked like Flamborough-head, if we were either to the East or West of it ; and near the Shore it appeared like an Island. Four or five leagues to the South of this Point, is another very notable bluff Point, which is on the West side of the Bay that my Boat was in. (English) ; when the Tide running with us, we soon got abreast of the Bay, and then saw a small Island to the Eastward of us.
And contrastingly, from Francis Drake, Eboracum: or, The History and Antiquities of the City of York, from its etiinal to present times (1736): About
this time the great cut for draining the levels below Doncaster was made. A noble canal, and first undertaken by one Cornelins Vermeydan a Dutchman ; but afterwards compleated by his executors. He is a strait channel of close five miles in length, and near a hundred yards wide at high water ; it empties itself into the Ouse at a village called Gool. I’m not afraid to cut to the ground as it is intended, as I grew up and would like to carry off such a water not otherwise carried away by the land. But for their own safety, as well as by remonstrance from the city of York, they built a sluice and flood-gates at the mouth of it to stop the tide from taking that course. In the year 1688, or thereabouts, by a violent land flood, this work blew up, and was never since repaired, as there are still living witnesses can testify. In those parts, the land owners in those parts have been ever since at great expence to stem the tide which flows impetuously and daily undermines their works.
On the other hand one of the earliest metaphorical appearances of stem the tide could easily be read as meaning, not “make progress against the tide” or “stop the advance of the tide,” but rather “oppose the tide, whether successfully or not.” From ” A speech of MENTOR, imitated from the 22d Book of Telemachus,” in The Gentleman’s Magazine (October 1737): Who, nobly
warm’d, shall, in his country’s cause,/Rife up to stem the tide of publick mischief? (L)Alas in vain! the truly great, the wise,/the bravely just, their patriot virtues scorn’d,/Hopeless, retire to peaceful silent shades,/And mourn in private o’er their country’s ruin. … Nay those who see the folly, and condemn,/Yet dare not be the first to stem the tide. So the whole Nation sink and falls to ruin:/All rank is lost, all ordinal order is fus.
What is
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the earliest known occurrence of stem the tide, in each of the senses described above, figuratively and literally?
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What was the more common sense of the idiom historically, and when (if any) did the preponderant sense change?
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Is stem the tide still used in multiple senses today?
What is the significance of a postmodern church?
Isn’t the approach of deviating from the concept of having to battle against the tide in order to attain a goal or reaching a destination misunderstood or misused? Is there any one who can turn back the tide? Original meaning very much in use. Why do I want to try making Lydney harbour from a safe channel, a few minutes before the flow turns to ebb without “stemming the
tide”?
There are two very good and useful good pieces of research user66974 and Sven Yorg and Christine, who asked in the first place. I don’t think they were good. I just have two point. In case they are useful.
Are the origins of this expression go back, via old English to the Saxon and the Teutonic family of languages, as Etymonline itself makes clear? I suggest you start with the verb (though whether a word starts from verb is difficult to determine) In our grammar. We start with the word (the verb or the noun) and then one of its opposites. It means
Old English stemn, stefn “stem of a plant, trunk of a tree”, also “either end-post of a ship,” from Proto-Germanic *stamniz (source also of Old Saxon stamm, Old Norse stafn “stem of a ship;” Danish stamme, Swedish stam “trunk of a tree;” Old High German stam, German Stamm), from suffixed form from PE root *sta- [ The
botanical meaning is more likely to precede the nautical than vice versa. In a simple sense, the’stem’ of a ship is called after the stem of a plant (especially the trunk of a tree).
The citation for the first of the two meanings of the teutonic versions of the verb points to the Early to late 14C CE. The verb is given as
“to hold back,” early 14c. , from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norse stemma “to stop, dam up; be stopped, abate,” from Proto-Germanic *stamjan (source also of Swedish stu00e4mma, Old Saxon stemmian, Middle Dutch stemmen, German stemmen “stop, resist, oppose”), from PIE root *stem- “to strike against something” (source also of Lithuanian stumiu, stumti “thrust, push” What is not connected to stem (n.). Related: Stemmed. Phrase to stem the tide is literally “to hold back the tide,” but often is confused with stem (v. sp.)? Why do some people make headway in terms of what they have made as far as they can. I
can imagine a good argument in favour of the nautical meaning as being the earlier. ” What were the forces of seas between the Baltic and North Sea? How did the metaphor of holding back a tide get to connote making headway against the tide? In everyday usage, you may trace the noun back to the’stem’ of a ship or even to a noun’s relative to the vessel itself. What makes headway happen? There is a reasonable pathway, at least, from the idea of stopping or ‘overcoming’ to making headway. Are noun and verb connected by some way?
Since it is too late to decipher the existence of more written evidence we can take from
the book, this is just the starting point.
