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say it: stay
stay is a verb and noun meaning "stay the same; remain in a certain state". It carries 16 recorded senses.
stay put (in a certain place)
“We are staying in Detroit; we are not moving to Cincinnati”
“Stay put in the corner here!”
“Stick around and you will learn something!”
continue in a place, position, or situation
“After graduation, she stayed on in Cambridge as a student adviser”
“Stay with me, please”
“despite student protests, he remained Dean for another year”
“She continued as deputy mayor for another year”
fasten with stays
the state of inactivity following an interruption
“the negotiations were in arrest”
“held them in check”
“during the halt he got some lunch”
“the momentary stay enabled him to escape the blow”
“he spent the entire stop in his seat”
a judicial order forbidding some action until an event occurs or the order is lifted
“the Supreme Court has the power to stay an injunction pending an appeal to the whole Court”
law
a thin strip of metal or bone that is used to stiffen a garment (e.g. a corset)
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for stay come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.