| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| stage |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  st j |
| NOUN: | 1. A raised and level floor or platform. 2a. A raised platform on which theatrical performances are presented. b. An area in which actors perform. c. The acting profession, or the world of theater. Used with the: The stage is her life. 3. The scene of an event or of a series of events. 4. A platform on a microscope that supports a slide for viewing. 5. A scaffold for workers. 6. A resting place on a journey, especially one providing overnight accommodations. 7. The distance between stopping places on a journey; a leg: proceeded in easy stages. 8. A stagecoach. 9. A level or story of a building. 10. The height of the surface of a river or other fluctuating body of water above a set point: at flood stage. 11a. A level, degree, or period of time in the course of a process: the toddler stage of child development; the early stages of a disease. b. A point in the course of an action or series of events: too early to predict a winner at this stage. 12. One of two or more successive propulsion units of a rocket vehicle that fires after the preceding one has been jettisoned. 13. Geology A subdivision in the classification of stratified rocks, ranking just below a series and representing rock formed during a chronological age. 14. Electronics An element or a group of elements in a complex arrangement of parts, especially a single tube or transistor and its accessory components in an amplifier. | | VERB: | Inflected forms: staged, stag·ing, stag·es
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To exhibit or present on or as if on a stage: stage a boxing match. 2. To produce or direct (a theatrical performance). 3. To arrange and carry out: stage an invasion. 4. Medicine To determine the extent or progression of (a cancer, for example). | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To be adaptable to or suitable for theatrical presentation. 2. To stop at a designated place in the course of a journey: “tourists from London who had staged through Warsaw” (Frederick Forsyth). | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English, from Old French estage, from Vulgar Latin *staticum, from Latin status, past participle of stre, to stand. See st- in Appendix I. | | OTHER FORMS: | stage ful —NOUN
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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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