stay back

UK/steɪˈbæk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Singapore/ˈsteɪˈbek̚/

stay back verb: to remain (at work, school, organisation, country, etc.) after normal hours.

Verb

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

(intransitive) To remain (at work, school, organisation, country, etc.) after normal hours
- Many of these students, in fact, do stay back and work in Singapore after their studies are over.2009, India Fever: The New Indian Professional in Singapore, page 106
- When parents are late, childcare workers have to stay back late to take care of the children.2011, Crisis Management and Public Policy: Singapore's Approach to Economic Resilience
Synonyms:

stay behind, tarry
(intransitive) To keep one's distance from a place, often because of some danger.
- 'Sir, you have to get back,' said a uniformed voice, an ambulance officer this time. 'We're asking everybody to stay back.' 'I live here,' he said. 'With my wife and my boy. Have you seen them?'2011, Her Singapore Fling, page 166
- ‘No, no, no. You stay back there. I don’t want you anywhere near me.’2017, Beneath the Lion City: Irreal Stories of Singapore, page 68

Mr Como was quite displeased and he told me to stay back tomorrow and do it.2011, My Kiasu Teenage Life in Singapore:
'The monitoring system would require Hock to stay back after school until 5 pm everyday to catch up on his school, have one of the discipline teachers to acknowledge the time he returned home.'2016, Singapore Teachers: Narratives of Care, Hope and Commitment, page 66:
'Of course, if we didn’t finish our work we had to stay back, and there was no such thing as overtime.2016, Singapore Eurasians: Memories, Hopes and Dreams, page 108:
'Because my stupid father thought it would be good for me to stay back and serve NS. he actually insisted that I do it.'2017, Angelia Poon, Angus Whitehead, editors, Singapore Literature and Culture: Current Directions in Local and Global Contexts, page 259:

third-person singular present	stays back
present participle	staying back
past participle	stayed back
past	stayed back
alternative form	stay behind

Phrasal verb formed with English elements, stay (verb) and back (preposition).

What does stay back mean?: Stay back means to remain (at work, school, organisation, country, etc.) after normal hours.
How do you use stay back in a sentence?: Mr Como was quite displeased and he told me to stay back tomorrow and do it.
What part of speech is stay back?: Stay back is a verb.
How do you pronounce stay back?: Stay back is pronounced /steɪˈbæk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of stay back?: The past tense of stay back is stayed back.

Adapted from Wiktionary: stay back (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “stay back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stay_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.