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Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody, welcome back to Know Your Verbs.
My name is Alisha, and in this episode, we're going to talk about the verb stay.
Let's get started.
Let's start with the basic definition of the verb stay.
The basic definition of stay is to remain in a place or situation.
Some examples.
We're staying at a beach house.
She stayed in that job for four years.
Now let's look at the conjugations for this verb.
Present, stay, stays.
Past, stayed.
Past participle, stayed.
Progressive, staying.
Now let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb.
The first additional meaning is to continue to do something or to continue a condition.
Some examples.
Our supermarket stays open until midnight.
I'm so tired, I can barely stay awake.
So this use of stay doesn't refer to a location, not a place, but actually a condition or that something is continuing, some state is continuing.
In the first example sentence, we see stays open.
The supermarket stays open until midnight.
That means the condition of open, the status of open.
So like a business is open, we can go to that business.
That status, that condition continues until midnight.
So the supermarket stays open is how we communicate that naturally.
In the second example sentence, we see, I can barely stay awake.
I can barely stay awake.
So here, the condition is awake.
So awake means not asleep.
So our eyes are open, we are doing things, we are awake.
So when we say I can barely stay awake, it means it's really difficult for me to continue being awake.
It's really difficult for me to keep my eyes open because I'm really tired.
So to stay in this way refers to a continued situation or a continued state.
The second additional meaning is to live in a place for a short time as a visitor.
Examples.
I'm staying in Sao Paulo for three days.
He always stays at the same hotel in Dubai.
So this use of stay refers to when we stop in a city or we stop in a country and we're there for a short period of time.
So we don't use this for long periods.
Like we don't use this when we're living in a country.
We use stay to talk about short trips, short visits to a specific place.
When we want to talk about the place where we live, we do not use stay.
We use the verb live to describe that.
When we're traveling somewhere, however, we use this verb to talk about either the city or the country where we're planning to visit or we use it to talk about the type of accommodation.
So this could be like a hotel, an Airbnb, an inn, a motel.
So you can use it to talk about the type of accommodation as well.
In the first example sentence, we see a city.
I'm staying in Sao Paulo for three days.
So that means that's a short term visit, a three day visit, so we can use stay to describe that.
In the second example sentence, it's about accommodations.
So he always stays in the same hotel in Dubai.
So that means the type of accommodation.
So we use it to talk about that short term visit.
So you can use this when you travel.
Let's move along to some variations with this verb.
The first variation is to stay out of something.
This means to refrain from being involved in something.
Let's look at some examples.
Stay out of this argument.
She was smart to stay out of the debate.
Okay, so to stay out of something means to not be included in something, but we choose not to be included in something.
The first example sentence though is actually a command, stay out of this argument.
So that's probably like a piece of advice or it could be a command, I suppose, but stay out of this is usually like kind of a forceful or a rather strong expression we can use to say don't participate, don't get involved in this.
There could be a number of reasons for that, but to stay out of something means to refrain from trying to participate in something.
In the second example sentence, she was smart to stay out of the debate.
It means she was smart to not try to participate in the debate.
We use this for situations that it might be uncomfortable to participate in or it might be really challenging to participate in.
So the first example sentence is an argument.
So it's probably an uncomfortable situation.
That's why the command stay out of this argument might be used.
In the second example sentence, it could be a really sensitive debate or a difficult discussion.
So we could say she was smart to stay out of that.
So it kind of has this feeling of maybe a difficult, challenging, or an uncomfortable situation that you want to avoid for some reason.
So to stay out of something.
The next variation is to stay in, to stay in.
This means to remain in one's home.
Let's look at some examples.
Let's stay in and watch a movie.
Thanks for the invitation, but I'm gonna stay in tonight.
So this stay in, we can consider this stay in as the opposite of go out.
So when we have like a weekend or a holiday, we typically have like two choices.
We can stay in our homes or we can go out of our homes and do something else out there.
So when we say I'm going to stay in, it means I'm not going to go out and do anything.
We commonly use this as an excuse for not doing something.
So I'm going to stay in tonight.
Let's stay in and watch a movie.
It means let's stay at home.
Let's go home and watch a movie.
Or maybe if you are at home, you can say let's stay here.
Let's stay in and watch a movie.
The second example sentence is a great example of how this is commonly used.
Thanks for the invitation, but I'm gonna stay in tonight.
That means that's my plan.
My plan is to stay in my home.
In other words, I'm not going to go out.
I'm going to stay inside my home tonight.
Let's move along to the next variation.
The next variation is to stay over, to stay over.
This means to stay at someone else's house.
Some examples.
You can stay over at our house tonight.
Can we stay over? So to stay over refers to spending the night at someone else's house.
It might be easier for you to remember stay over if you think of this as stay over the night or stay over night.
So it usually means one night only.
So if, for example, the weather is really terrible and it becomes dangerous to drive on a road, you might use the second example sentence.
Like can we stay over? Like the weather has gotten terrible.
Can we stay over? So you might make like a request like this to stay at a friend's house or to stay at someone's house.
Children actually use this a lot.
So when you're in maybe elementary school or perhaps junior high school, you may want to stay over at a friend's house.
So friends maybe stay over at one another's houses.
Kids play together, stay up late, watch movies, whatever.
So we use stay over to talk about just that one kind of like friendly stay.
Like people stay just for one night.
We don't use this for hotels really.
You might hear this used when people are talking about like taking a road trip, like moving quickly from city to city.
Like I'm going to stay over in city A then move to city B, stay over in city C perhaps, I suppose.
But we tend to use this more when we're talking about sleeping at a friend's house for one night.
Okay, so I hope that you found a new way of using the verb stay.
Actually, there are a lot more ways to use this verb.
There are a lot of phrasal verbs that involve stay.
So if you have some questions or if you want to learn more, please check out a dictionary.
I highly recommend that.
Of course, if you have questions or comments or want to practice making an example sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video.
Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we'll see you again soon.
Bye.

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