Shaggy Dogs & Black Sheep by Albert Jack

October 16th 2005


Stemming the Flow

Stemming the Flow of blood or water is one of the most commonly used phrases and it doesn't even occur to many of us that it is actually an idiom. One of the oldest in our language, the expression can be traced back to the Viking invasions of the late eighth century and the old Nordic language they brought along with them. The Vikings used to build dams and the Norse word for one of those is stemma, which, loosely translated, means to 'dam up' or 'stop'. The word soon became a part of our everyday language and remained so, even after we had managed to finally stemma the flow of Vikings across the North Sea.