Ordstamme

Ordstamme is a linguistic term used in several Nordic languages to denote the base form of a word from which inflected and derived forms are built. It represents the core to which grammatical endings attach and is a central concept in morphology, word formation, and lexicography. The ordstamme is often described as the stem, and in many cases it coincides with the dictionary form (lemma), though this is not universal.

In practice, the ordstamme is identified by removing inflectional endings from a word. For example, in Swedish the noun bil yields bilar (cars) and bilen (the car), where the ordstammen is bil- (the stem bil). For verbs, the ordstamme can be the form to which inflectional endings attach, as in springa (to run), where the present tense springer is formed by adding the ending -er to the stem spring-.

The concept is important for dictionaries, language teaching, and computational linguistics, because it helps describe how related forms are connected and how new words are generated from a common base. Some languages exhibit stem changes due to vowel alternation or other phonological processes, which can complicate the identification of a single stable ordstamme. Nevertheless, the ordstamme provides a practical abstraction for analyzing word formation and morphological patterns.