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stay-at-home

stay-at-home

3 3.5
An official order telling people to remain at home to slow the spread of a disease
  • noun
  • /ˈsteɪ əˌt hoʊm/
  • Formal
translation icon : confinamiento domiciliario
  • You were the first US governor to issue stay at home orders.
  • stay-at-home behavior

You were the first US governor to issue stay at home orders.

Examples

  • Now, Sir, today is the last day of President Trump's official stay at home guidelines.

  • These guidance is to stay at home and avoid contact with other people.

  • School closures, again, the stay at home orders.

  • This may provide a strong incentive to change the current stay-at-home approach to national security.

    Academic text (1998)
  • Far greater options in television programming and the advent of videos and DVDs have encouraged people to stay at home and watch TV or movies.

    Academic text (2005)
  • As we reported in our infographic on Friday, adults under the age of 35 have decided to stay at home with their parents instead of purchasing their own home.

    Blog text (18)
  • The baseline scenario of the model corresponded to current workplace patterns of employees' stay-at-home behavior.

    Academic text (2013)
  • The governor announced new stay-at-home orders to help control the spread of the virus.

  • "Please follow the stay-at-home guidance to protect yourself and others during the outbreak."

  • During the pandemic, many families adhered to the stay-at-home directive issued by local authorities.

Surface Forms

stay-at-home singular
stay-at-homes plural

Morphology

stay-at-home = stay + home (transparent) = at + stay + home

The compound denotes an instruction to 'stay at home'; the directive sense is a direct pragmatic extension of the phrase components. [Postprocessing: moved 'at' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Stay-at-home is built from stay ('remain') and home ('house'), and during health crises it became the name for an official order telling people to stay at home to stop a disease spreading. That's why a stay-at-home order asks people to avoid travel and gatherings.