Word.ws English Dictionary

stay on

stay on verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, on.

Verb

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

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, on.
    • How does your hat manage to stay on in such strong wind?
    • The light stays on even if there's a power outage.
  2. (idiomatic) to continue in a place or situation, while others leave.
    • Some of her friends decided it was time to go home, but she wanted to stay on in there until sunrise.
    • After the trial period, she was asked to stay on and work full-time.

Forms of stay on

third-person singular presentstays on
present participlestaying on
past participlestayed on
paststayed on

Questions about stay on

What does stay on mean?
Stay on means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, on.
What part of speech is stay on?
Stay on is a verb.
What is the past tense of stay on?
The past tense of stay on is stayed on.

Words near stay on in the dictionary

  1. stay frosty
  2. stay hungry
  3. stay in
  4. stay in one's lane
  5. stay loose
  6. stay on
  7. stay out
  8. stay over
  9. stay put
  10. stay tackle
  11. stay tackles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stay on (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-stay on.ogg.

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