| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| stay1 |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  st |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: stayed, stay·ing, stays
| | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To continue to be in a place or condition: stay home; stay calm. 2. To remain or sojourn as a guest or lodger: stayed at a motel. 3. To stop moving; halt. 4. To wait; pause. 5. To endure or persist: stayed with the original plan. 6. To keep up in a race or contest: tried to stay with the lead runner. 7. Games To meet a bet in poker without raising it. 8. To stand one's ground; remain firm. 9. Archaic To cease from a specified activity. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To stop or halt; check. 2. To postpone; delay. 3. To delay or stop the effect of (an order, for example) by legal action or mandate: stay a prisoner's execution. 4. To satisfy or appease temporarily: stayed his anger. 5. To remain during: stayed the week with my parents; stayed the duration of the game. 6. To wait for; await: “I will not stay thy questions. Let me go;/Or if thou follow me, do not believe/But I shall do thee mischief in the wood” (Shakespeare). | | NOUN: | 1. The act of halting; check. 2. The act of coming to a halt. 3. A brief period of residence or visiting. 4. A suspension or postponement of a legal action or an execution: granted a stay to the prisoner's execution. | | IDIOMS: | stay put To remain in a fixed or established position. stay the course To hold out or persevere to the end of a race or challenge. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English steien, from Old French ester, esteir, from Latin stre. See st- in Appendix I. | | SYNONYMS: | stay1, remain, wait, abide, tarry1, linger, sojourn These verbs mean to continue to be in a given place. Stay is the least specific, though it can also suggest that the person involved is a guest or visitor: “Must you go? Can't you stay?” (Charles J. Vaughan). Remain often implies continuing or being left after others have gone: I remained at the end of the meeting to talk to the speaker. Wait suggests remaining in readiness, anticipation, or expectation: “Your father is waiting for me to take a walk with him” (Booth Tarkington). Abide implies continuing for a lengthy period: “Abide with me” (Henry Francis Lyte). Tarry and linger both imply a delayed departure, but linger more strongly suggests reluctance to leave: “She was not anxious but puzzled that her husband tarried” (Eden Phillpotts). “I alone sit lingering here” (Henry Vaughan). To sojourn is to reside temporarily in a place: “He was sojourning at [a] hotel in Bond Street” (Anthony Trollope).See also synonyms at defer1.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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