stay up
"stay-up" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“stay up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, up.
Corpus desk
Index EN-stay-up · stay up · English
stay up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | stay up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “stay up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
stay up 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 up, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is stay up, spelled S-T-A-Y- -U-P.
Definition
- 1Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stay, up.
- 2To remain awake; to not go to bed.
- 3To maintain an erection.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how stay up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
These trousers are too big around the waist. They won't stay up.
My plane leaves at 6:00 in the morning, so I plan to stay up until then and sleep on the plane.
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.