Bright and Clueless

Ten Bob in the comments somewhere on this page makes reference to "stemming a rose". I think we can all take a guess what it means especially as it was in context of talking about that sheepherding movie...

Some people over at Language Hat don't want to believe this. Quite a few, no doubt denial-adjacent, souls try to make it mean "struggling against love", which I guess it kind of does but only if you use "love" the way Robert Plant does.

I did learn one thing while reading Language Hat's comments, though, and that's this:

There is a French expression involving 'the rose'

"Faire les feuilles d'une rose"

Literally it means "to make the leaves of the rose"; figuratively it means "to give a rim job".