English homophones

stade/staid/stayed

"stade" is a noun; "staid" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "stade" arrives as a noun, while "staid" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

Shared stem "sta" then splits - "stade" (5 letters) vs "staid" (5).
Shared stem "sta" then splits - "stade" (5 letters) vs "stayed" (6).
Shared stem "sta" then splits - "staid" (5 letters) vs "stayed" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across stade, staid, stayed: adst. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

stade
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVCV
Inventory adest · private e
staid
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVVC
Inventory adist · private i
stayed
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVVC
Inventory adesty · private ey

Pick the spelling from the meaning

Write "stade" when you mean: Synonym of stadion (“former Greek unit of distance”).
Write "staid" when you mean: Not capricious or impulsive; sedate, serious, sober.
Write "stayed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of stay

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

stade ← satde · sstade · stadde · stdae · sttade · tsade
staid ← satid · sstaid · stadi · staidd · stiad · sttaid
stayed ← satyed · sstayed · staeyd · stayde · stayedd · stayyed

Each spelling

stade

noun · /steɪd/ · #41,387 frequency

Synonym of stadion (“former Greek unit of distance”).

staid

adjective · /steɪd/ · #48,507 frequency

Not capricious or impulsive; sedate, serious, sober.

stayed

verb · /steɪd/ · #2,864 frequency

simple past and past participle of stay

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (stade, staid, stayed). Here's where to go from here.

"stayed" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #2,864 in English). Full entry
Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: Sacks · sax · sacs. Nearby cluster
Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.