from stem to stern
1
7.7
- idiom
- Informal
:
de arriba a abajo
- - I'm reupholstering it from stem to stern.
Examples
-
The team cleaned the yacht thoroughly, scrubbing every surface from stem to stern.
-
- Distribute them from stem to stern.
-
And when I say that they went from stem to stern, they did.
-
I order you completely rehabilitated from stem to stern.
-
And I watched Yellow Hawk take a knife and cut Billy from stem to stern.
-
Somewhere along the way in a true temple prep class, the instructor should basically walk the class through the process from stem to stern.
Blog text (9) -
Mr. Arrow, l've checked this miserable ship... from stem to stern, and, as usual, it's...spot on.
-
Flags and pennants snapped and fluttered from stem to stern.
Fiction book (2001) -
The ship was renovated from stem to stern, making it look brand new.
-
We inspected the old sailing vessel from stem to stern before deciding to purchase it.
Synonyms
Completely from the beginning to the end
Antonyms
How Thorough
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'completely; throughout' is directly derivable from combining 'from' + 'stem' (front of a ship) + 'to' + 'stern' (rear of a ship): knowing the constituents yields the sense of covering the whole length. This is a standard 'from X to Y' compositional pattern (similar to 'head to toe') and despite its nautical origin the logic is cross-linguistically transparent for learners who know the component words.
Etymology
The phrase from stem to stern comes from ships. It names the space from a ship's front called stem to its back called stern, so it shows checking the whole ship, and that's why it now means 'completely'.