Word.ws English Dictionary

upstay

upstay verb: to sustain, support.

Verb

upstay (third-person singular simple present upstays, present participle upstaying, simple past and past participle upstayed)

  1. (archaic) To sustain, support.
    • those two villeins, which her steps vpstayd, / When her weake feete could scarcely her sustaine, / And fading vitall powers gan to fade, / Her forward still with torture did constraine […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • Close to the vital seat of human clay; / Glad meetings, tender partings, that upstay1820, The River Duddon A Series of Sonnets, XXVIII, Journey Renewed

Forms of upstay

third-person singular presentupstays
present participleupstaying
past participleupstayed
pastupstayed

Origin of upstay

From up- + stay.

Questions about upstay

What does upstay mean?
Upstay means to sustain, support.
What part of speech is upstay?
Upstay is a verb.
What is the past tense of upstay?
The past tense of upstay is upstayed.

Words near upstay in the dictionary

  1. upstate
  2. upstater
  3. upstaters
  4. upstates
  5. upstats
  6. upstay
  7. upstayed
  8. upstaying
  9. upstays
  10. upsteal
  11. upstealing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: upstay (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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