Stemmer
noun
1.
a person who removes stems.
2.
a device for removing stems, as from tobacco, grapes, etc.
noun
1.
an implement for stemming or tamping.
information science, human language
A program or algorithm which determines the morphological root of a given inflected (or, sometimes, derived) word form — generally a written word form.
A stemmer for English, for example, should identify the string “cats” (and possibly “catlike”, “catty” etc.) as based on the root “cat”, and “stemmer”, “stemming”, “stemmed” as based on “stem”.
English stemmers are fairly trivial (with only occasional problems, such as “dries” being the third-person singular present form of the verb “dry”, “axes” being the plural of “ax” as well as “axis”); but stemmers become harder to design as the morphology, orthography, and character encoding of the target language becomes more complex. For example, an Italian stemmer is more complex than an English one (because of more possible verb inflections), a Russian one is more complex (more possible noun declensions), a Hebrew one is even more complex (a hairy writing system), and so on.
Stemmers are common elements in query systems, since a user who runs a query on “daffodils” probably cares about documents that contain the word “daffodil” (without the s).
(This dictionary has a rudimentary stemmer which currently (April 1997) handles only conversion of plurals to singulars).
(1997-04-09)
Read Also:
- Stemmery
noun, plural stemmeries. 1. a factory or other place where tobacco leaves are stripped.
- Stemming
noun 1. the ascending axis of a plant, whether above or below ground, which ordinarily grows in an opposite direction to the root or descending axis. 2. the stalk that supports a leaf, flower, or fruit. 3. the main body of that portion of a tree, shrub, or other plant which is above ground; trunk; […]
- Stem-rot
noun, Plant Pathology. 1. a symptom or phase of many diseases of plants, characterized by decay of the stem tissues. 2. any disease so characterized.
- Stem-rust
noun, Plant Pathology. 1. any of several fungal diseases of plants affecting the stems, especially a disease of wheat and other grasses characterized by pustules of red and then black spores. 2. any of the fungi causing such a disease.
- Stems
noun 1. the ascending axis of a plant, whether above or below ground, which ordinarily grows in an opposite direction to the root or descending axis. 2. the stalk that supports a leaf, flower, or fruit. 3. the main body of that portion of a tree, shrub, or other plant which is above ground; trunk; […]