stemmer

noun

stem·​mer ˈste-mər 

plural stemmers

: one that stems something: such as

a

: a person or device that removes the stems from an agricultural product (such as tobacco leaves or grapes)

a mechanical stemmer

b

: software that generates stem words (see stem entry 1 sense 4) from their inflected forms

The stemmer follows Porter's algorithm and works for Brazilian Portuguese by identifying the stem of words by incrementally removing their suffix/termination.

—Alexandre Ribeiro Afonso and Cláudio Gottschalg Duque

Word History

First Known Use

1817, in the meaning defined above