From the beginning to the end; the whole thing. The analogy to a complete meal of numerous courses dates back many years. John Heywood’s proverb collection of 1546 has it “from potage to cheese,” and John Clarke’s 1639 collection, “from th’egges to th’apples.” The precise locution of soup to nuts appears to be American and dates only from the early twentieth century. A very similar cliché, from start to finish, comes from sports, particularly rowing races. The earliest example in print, according to the OED, dates from a sports publication of 1868. This cliché is more common in Britain, where finish is used as a noun more often than it is in America. See also alpha and omega; from the word go.

To stop the course of a trend, opinion, or the like. The verb to stem, meaning to stop or restrain, comes from the Old Norse word stemma, meaning “to dam.” It would take an enormous dam to stop ocean tides, but the tide of public opinion, for example, can be checked or diverted. Thus Fred A. Paley wrote (The Tragedies of Aeschylus, 1855), “Aristophanes evidently saw the tide . . . and he vainly tried to stem it by the barrier of his ridicule.”

From beginning to end; entirely. In nautical terminology the stem is an upright at the bow (front) of a vessel and the stern is the back end. This counterpart of from head to toe and from soup to nuts was quoted by the Roman writer Cicero as a Greek proverb. In English the term was used literally from about 1600 on, and figuratively soon afterward.