stay, verb intransitive

Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Probably reinforced by Afrikaans bly stay, live.
colloquial
To live, reside.
Note:
Used also in Indian , Scottish , and U.S. (regional) English.
1908 J.H. Drummond Diary. 3Her daughter stays in P.E. and studies the violin.
a1915 Mod.(Cape Colony: communicated), Englishman: Who lived in that house last? Colonial: Oh, Mr. Brown stayed there.
1949 H.C. Bosman Cold Stone Jug (1969) 21The only times I’ve ever walked about looking for a whore it was in the other end of the town from where he stays.
1959 A. Fullerton Yellow Ford 45‘Would you care to stay round here man?’ I had not caught on, at first, to her meaning: the verb ‘stay’ is used in South Africa when in England we’d say ‘live’.
1969 Daily Dispatch 30 Sept.The date for the funeral has been provisionally set for Saturday this week at Buntingville, where they stayed.
1972 Evening Post 10 June 5‘I haven’t seen Romolo since he left South Africa with my father in 1905,’ said Mario S-..who stays in Thornhill, near Port Elizabeth.
1979 M. Matshoba Call Me Not a Man 115The generation gap. I bridged it by telling her exactly where I stay in Mzimhlope and who my people are.
1989 J. Hobbs Thoughts in Makeshift Mortuary 171Ma stays by the house. My older sister Violet..and the four kids moved back. They stay in the garage.
1991 G. Zwirn in Settler Vol.65 No.2, 10To stay. ‘Where do you stay?’ was..the first question put to me on arrival in South Africa. Since I was staying neither at a hotel, boarding-house or hostel, I was at first non-plussed for an answer. Then the penny dropped: what the speaker was asking me was merely ‘Where do you live?’
1991 Sunday Times 31 Aug. (Extra) 3Mr Gert H—, 30 years old and now staying in Kuils River after the tractor tragedy that left him hospitalised.
To live, reside.
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19081991
States, nounn.stay well, interjectional phraseint. phr.
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