Word.ws English Dictionary

stay at home

stay at home is the alternative spelling of stay-at-home.

Verb

stay at home (third-person singular simple present stays at home, present participle staying at home, simple past and past participle stayed at home)

  1. Not to vote in an election; not to turn out; not to make it to the polls
    • Democrats were concerned that Mitt Romney might win the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election because millennials would stay at home on Election Day.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, at, home.

Meaning of stay-at-home

Adjective

stay-at-home (not comparable)

  1. (attributive) Of a parent: not employed and rather devoting more time to one's children.
    • stay-at-home dad
  2. (attributive) Of rules or regulations: forbidding the populace to leave their domicile except under emergency or other special circumstances, especially for purposes of quarantine.
    • stay-at-home orders
  3. (attributive) Of or relating to quarantine in the home.
    • the stay-at-home era
  4. Not ever travelling or moving far from home.
    • He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 195...
  5. Playing very defensively; not leaving the defensive zone early.

See all 7 meanings of stay-at-home

Forms of stay at home

Noun
pluralstay at homes
Verb
third-person singular presentstays at home
present participlestaying at home
past participlestayed at home
paststayed at home

Questions about stay at home

What does stay at home mean?
Stay at home means not to vote in an election; not to turn out; not to make it to the polls.
What is stay at home the alternative spelling of?
Stay at home is the alternative spelling of stay-at-home.
What part of speech is stay at home?
Stay at home is a verb.
What is the past tense of stay at home?
The past tense of stay at home is stayed at home.

Words near stay at home in the dictionary

  1. stawsome
  2. StAX
  3. staxis
  4. stay
  5. stay and play
  6. stay at home
  7. stay at homes
  8. stay away
  9. stay back
  10. stay behind
  11. stay behinds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stay at home (page history and authors); stay-at-home (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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Cite this entry: “stay at home.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stay_at_home. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.