stay out

verb

"stay-out" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“stay out” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
8
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To spend time out of one's house.

Corpus desk

Index EN-stay-out · stay out · English

stay out · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "S" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for stay out
PropertyValue
Headwordstay out
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters8
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “stay out” in English

stay outfalls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

stay out is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for stay out, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is stay out, spelled S-T-A-Y- -O-U-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    To spend time out of one's house.
  2. 2
    To avoid going into somewhere.
  3. 3
    To outstay; to stay longer than.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how stay out appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. He stayed out all night in the bar.
  2. She found a boyfriend. Not an Italian. She went to the movies with him. She stayed out late. I didn't protest.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "stay out"?
"stay out" is spelled S-T-A-Y- -O-U-T.
What does "stay out" mean?
As a verb, "stay out" means: To spend time out of one's house.
What language does "stay out" come from?
"stay out" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list