Word.ws English Dictionary

staying up

staying up is the present participle and gerund of stay up.

Meaning of stay up

Verb

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

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, up.
    • These trousers are too big around the waist. They won't stay up.
  2. (intransitive) To remain awake; to not go to bed.
    • My plane leaves at 6:00 in the morning, so I plan to stay up until then and sleep on the plane.
  3. (euphemistic, intransitive) To maintain an erection.
    • He told his lover he has a problem staying up.

Questions about staying up

What is staying up the present participle and gerund of?
Staying up is the present participle and gerund of stay up.

Words near staying up in the dictionary

  1. staying the course
  2. staying the distance
  3. staying the night
  4. staying together
  5. staying tuned
  6. staying up
  7. staying up late
  8. staying within the lines
  9. stayings
  10. staylace
  11. staylaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: staying up (page history and authors); stay up (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:

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