Word.ws English Dictionary

stay-behinds

stay-behinds is the plural of stay-behind.

Meaning of stay-behind

Noun

stay-behind (plural stay-behinds)

  1. (idiomatic) One who remains when expected to leave or after others have left.
    • In areas where stay-behinds could be a threat, however, motion detectors should be used.1988, Robert L. Barnard, Intrusion Detection Systems, page 46
  2. An agent who resides in a foreign country, and can be activated in certain circumstances.
    • a. 2000, Sam Halpern, Quoted in 2000, James Srodes, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies, page 545,
      Bobby Kennedy believed the Mafia had lots of interests in and people in Cuba; he was absolutely convinced that they had left stay-behinds in Cuba and all they had to do was tap into those stay-behinds.

Questions about stay-behinds

What is stay-behinds the plural of?
Stay-behinds is the plural of stay-behind.

Words near stay-behinds in the dictionary

  1. stay-at-homer
  2. stay-at-homers
  3. stay-at-homes
  4. stay-away
  5. stay-behind
  6. stay-behinds
  7. stay-button
  8. stay-buttons
  9. stay-cation
  10. stay-cations
  11. stay-dry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stay-behinds (page history and authors); stay-behind (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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