stemma
Americannoun
PLURAL
stemmatanoun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Etymology
Origin of stemma
1650–60; < New Latin < Greek stémma wreath, garland, derivative (with -ma noun suffix of result) from root of stéphos garland, stéphein to crown; from the crownlike appearance of ocelli in certain insects
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I looked around as he spoke and you could almost breathe the beauty: a piece of an Islamic column from Spain, an Italian Renaissance stemma, many Berber pots, pine cones and marble busts.
From New York Times
Because when they painted a stemma on the glaze they had still feudal faith in nobility, and when they painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo they had still childlike belief in divinity.
From Project Gutenberg
Its great faceted eyes inform it of all that happens to right and left; its three stemmata, like little ruby telescopes, explore the sky above its head.
From Project Gutenberg
Our simpler stemma indicates the presence of one rather than more than one such manuscript in the vicinity of Paris in the ninth or the tenth century and again in the fifteenth.
From Project Gutenberg
OCELLI.—The simple eyes or stemmata of insects, usually situated on the crown of the head between the great compound eyes.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
