SS (relatively) top of the stack; boot loaders are usually set to 0x7e00 so that the stack 0x7e00 directly above the executable code. This means "Stack Segment".
ESP is the (absolute) bottom of the stack; it is installed on something above SS and it is growing. It means "(extended) stack pointer". To get the amount of space that you have on the stack, move the ESP to a temporary register and subtract the SS from it. Please note that this probably only works in real mode.
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