stay the course
"stay-the-course" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stay the course” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 15
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To persist or continue, especially in the face of difficulties.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stay the course |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 15 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “stay the course” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for stay the course is 15 letters long, classified as a verb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "To persist or continue, especially in the face of difficulties.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for stay the course in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is stay the course, spelled S-T-A-Y- -T-H-E- -C-O-U-R-S-E.
Definition
- 1To persist or continue, especially in the face of difficulties.
This word in other languages
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
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Using “stay the course”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-T-A-Y- -T-H-E- -C-O-U-R-S-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.