stay-at-home
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: stay-at-homes
form: stay at home
Senses: examples: text: I had a fancy to go there [Archangel in Russia]. Now my fancy has been gratified, and there is yet another place written down in the charts of my experience. And it is always a little saddening to exchange a dream for a reality—once also the Caucasus was a name crowded with boundless possibility, and I went there and saw what it was. I almost envy those stay-at-homes for whom Europe and the world is quite unproved.
ref: 1911 August 20, Stephen Graham, “The White Night. Impressions of the Far North in Russia. From St. James’s Gazette.”, in The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif., →ISSN, section “A Riverside Inn”, page 249, columns 2–3:
text: Some animals are stay-at-homes, and some are travelers and migrate. Tommy, who finds this out, is a little like both.
ref: 1960, “[Friskey, Margaret.] Trip for Tommy. Children’s Press, 1953. $1.50.”, in Frieda M[aurie] Heller, compiler, “I Can Read it Myself!”: Some Books for Independent Reading in the Primary Grades (Center for School Experimentation, Study of Independent Reading; Bulletin Number 1), Columbus, Oh.: College of Education, The Ohio State University, →OCLC, page 13:
text: Many stay-at-homes stay at home because they truly love the place. Of course, some people simply are too timid to go to unfamiliar places.
ref: 1997, Phillip C[raig] Schlechty, “[Leading the Change Process] Stay-at-Homes”, in Inventing Better Schools: An Action Plan for Educational Reform (The Jossey-Bass Education Series), San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass Publishers, →ISBN, page 218:
text: Other species, like wildebeest, forage over large distances, while others again, like birds, are strictly territorial at certain times of the year yet, at other times, have the capacity to make long migrations. But on the whole, animals are ‘stay-at-homes’, and it is the ability to leave home without anxiety that is exceptional and which requires explanation.
ref: 2000, Anthony Stevens, John Price, “Anxiety and phobic disorders”, in Evolutionary Psychiatry: A New Beginning, 2nd edition, London; Philadelphia, Pa.: Routledge, →ISBN, part II (Disorders of attachment and rank), page 106:
text: Both the hardy long-distance travelers and the butterfly stay-at-homes face continual danger from predators.
ref: 2005, Joni Phelps Hunt, “Hiding out & passing for poisonous”, in A Shimmer of Butterflies: The Brief, Brilliant Life of a Magical Insect, Montrose, Calif.: London Town Press, →ISBN, page 35, column 1:
synonyms: homebody
glosses: A person or animal that prefers to stay at home rather than socialize or travel.
examples: text: We [women], I guess, got into the habit of being stay-at-homes while our children were small because you’re not there during the day with them, you tend to spend your evenings and weekends [with them] […]
ref: 1990, Ruth Carter, Gill Kirkup, quoting Meg, “[Private lives] Children and childcare”, in Jo Campling, editor, Women in Engineering: A Good Place to Be? (Women in Society: A Feminist List), Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education Ltd, →ISBN, page 102:
text: Many of the women domestics and store clerks become stay-at-homes by default. Their immersion in their own needs, their hunger for something, prompts a comparison to Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and the white aspiration theme of so much 1920s work fiction.
ref: 2001, Laura Hapke, “From Black Folk to Working Class: African American Labor Fiction between the World Wars”, in Labor’s Text: The Worker in American Fiction, New Brunswick, N.J.; London: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, part II (The Road to 1930), page 205:
text: Like many stay-at-home dads, I found myself both elated and paralyzed by the idea of caring for our son eights hours a day, five days a week. My wife and I were in the same position many stay-at-homes face: she made more money than I did, and the cost of daycare per month was as much as I was making in a month.
ref: 2004, Charlie Leckenby, “[From the Frontlines of Fatherhood: More Dads in the Spotlight] The Stay-At-Home Dad Blues”, in Peter Baylies, Jessica Toonkel, The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Review Press, →ISBN, page 188:
glosses: A parent who is not employed and rather devoting more time to children.