{"id":8453,"date":"2013-04-06T09:52:25","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T09:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=8453"},"modified":"2013-04-06T09:52:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T09:52:25","slug":"staying-stopping-and-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=8453","title":{"rendered":"Staying, stopping and living"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed recently that in Scottish English and Scots people use the word stay to mean that you live in a place, i.e. that you live there on a permanent or long-term basis. <\/p>\n

When I hear this I usually know what is meant from the context, but it can be ambiguous at times, as to me a stay usually a short-term thing, such as holiday. I would use live to indicate a long-term stay – e.g. I live in Bangor, but am currently staying with a friend in Lerwick in Shetland.<\/p>\n

According to the Online Scots Dictionary<\/a>, stey [st\u0259i] means “To stay, to remain, tarry. To dwell, reside permanently, to make one’s home.”<\/p>\n

Related words include:
\n– bide [b\u0259id] = to dwell, reside, wait, stay, await, stay for, remain
\n– stap [stap] = to live or stay at an address (among many other meanings)
\n– wone [w\u0254n, w\u026an] = to dwell, live, stay habitually. To accustom oneself to, be reconciled to.<\/p>\n

I can’t find an equivalent Scots words for a short-term stay, though I think bide is used in this context, particularly in Shetland.<\/p>\n

In other varieties of English and in other languages is there a distinction between a short-term stay and a long-term one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed recently that in Scottish English and Scots people use the word stay to mean that you live in a place, i.e. that you live there on a permanent or long-term basis. When I hear this I usually know what is meant from the context, but it can be ambiguous at times, as to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,55,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-scots","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}