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STAID
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Characterized by dignity and propriety
Synonyms:
sedate; staid
Classified under:
Similar:
decorous (characterized by propriety and dignity and good taste in manners and conduct)
Derivation:
staidness (a trait of dignified seriousness)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb stay
Context examples:
But I thought he would have staid now, and it would have been a pity not to have mentioned....
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I should not have had to follow her if she had staid.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order, still just as it had been when I first saw it.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
This was my bed all the time I staid with those people, though made more convenient by degrees, as I began to learn their language and make my wants known.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It was a staid, respectable magazine, and it had been published continuously since long before he was born.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The sad accident at Lyme was soon the prevailing topic, and on comparing their latest accounts of the invalid, it appeared that each lady dated her intelligence from the same hour of yestermorn; that Captain Wentworth had been in Kellynch yesterday (the first time since the accident), had brought Anne the last note, which she had not been able to trace the exact steps of; had staid a few hours and then returned again to Lyme, and without any present intention of quitting it any more.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Lydia was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently staid so long, that even Bingley's good humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to talk of giving them a hint to be gone.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
They were engaged about the end of that time to attend Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was kept away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this party, Marianne, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and seeming equally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared, without one look of hope or one expression of pleasure.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days; I was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have just the right weather for him, fine, dry, settled weather.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
