stays
/steɪz/noun, verb
stays is spelled S-T-A-Y-S: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 18 times per million words in written English, the 4,589th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, stays means “A corset” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in stays?
| Letters | 5: S-T-A-Y-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 18 times per million words; the 4,589th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is stays?
Stays appears 18 times per million words in written English, the 4,589th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce stays?
- /steɪz/
Stays has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-I_learned_some_phrases-stays.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What does stays mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A corset.
Her face was whiter than snow, and her heart was throbbing through her stays.
- 2
plural of stay
verb
- 1
third-person singular simple present indicative of stay
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).