Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A chief support: Agriculture is a mainstay of the economy.
- n. Nautical A strong rope that serves to steady and support the mainmast of a sailing vessel.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The rope which secures the head of the mainmast of a vessel forward.
- n. 2. Chief support; main dependence: as, their mainstay is fishing.
- n. plural All the stays which give support to the main lower mast, maintopmast, and maintopgallantmast.
Wiktionary
- n. A chief support.
- n. nautical A stabilising rope from the top of the mainmast to the bottom of the foremast.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Naut.) The stay extending from the foot of the foremast to the maintop.
- n. Main support; principal dependence.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a prominent supporter
- n. a central cohesive source of support and stability
- n. the forestay that braces the mainmast
Etymologies
- From main + stay (“rope”). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The lot more includes her jewellery and interior designing business, which she calls her mainstay profession. “I have quite a few theme projects coming up on the interior designing front.”
“The mainstay is just making sure people don't die of dehydration.”
“If we are not able to do our study and use the commentaries for correction afterward, if our mainstay is not the word of God but the words of anybody else, we are still derivative teachers. from → Articles”
Ad Fontes, a Mystical and Protestant View of Teaching « Unknowing
“My jobs mainstay is visiting hunters and I've watched these guys/gals spend thoudands of dollars so I see increased licenses fees, hotel/motel taxes and maybe even an October through December fuel tax as a way to fund a state sponsored program.”
“(Senate Historian Richard Baker, Defense Correspondent Tony Capaccio, Sen. Sam Nunn, assorted biologists, engineers, and international journalists) These people may or may not have opinions, but their mainstay is fact-based explanations of their specialties for the intelligent layman.”
“Okay, so those of you who've been reading this site for a while now understand that while I often post indie rock or some weird, slightly experimental jazzy something or other, my mainstay is Techno music in all its glorious forms.”
“The bullpen mainstay is Troy Percival, who converted 39 of 42 save opportunities.”
“Guyana and West Indies middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul is often described as the mainstay of the regional side.”
“Copper is not the long-term mainstay of the Zambian economy, "the Bank's representative Ohene Nyanin said in an earlier interview in Lusaka.”
“The mainstay was the 115-horsepower 258 cubic-inch inline six-cylinder engine that finally ended its decades-long production run when the old Wrangler ended production in 2006 and was replaced by a more modern V6 engine.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mainstay’.
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Psychology
Chapter 1
rigorous, occurrence, maze, divers, intellectual, expansion, all in all, sensation, introspection, radical, orientation, nurture and 174 more...
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phrontistery - m
from phrontistery.info
mabble, mabsoot, macadamize, macarism, macarize, macaronic, macerate, macerator, machair, machairodont, machicolation, machinule and 898 more...
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If it ain't broke
paint, quaint, maintop, saint, faint, dainty, ain't, unacquainted, the rain in Spain..., ruzuzutainment, 1 Mountain Artill..., Ukraine and 81 more...
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Assist
abet, advocate, ancillary, bolster, corroborate, countenance, espouse, munificent, mainstay, proponent, stalwart, sustenance
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Amalgamations
Words that have been smashed together.
keystone, touchstone, footprint, thunderhead, seesaw, textbook, leftovers, watchword, afterbirth, fieldwork, outcast, statesman and 148 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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GRE
anomaly, assuage, enigma, equivocal, erudite, fervid, placate, lucid, opaque, precipitate, prodigal, zeal and 113 more...
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Words I will probably never use
décolleté, pendragon, amerce, viviparous, dragoon, brigand, outlaw, outlawry, lugubrious, boor, contretemps, decrepit and 151 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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GRE Vocab II
apace, impetuous, abet, countenance, mainstay, munificent, bilious, dudgeon, pettish, querulous, waspish, neophyte and 113 more...
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Mobile Microsite
Words for marketing mobile emails to email marketers.
incandescence, bolt, dart, pealing, akimbo, critical, get focused, zoom in, concentrate, zonk out, freak out, freebee and 99 more...
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Three Sheets to the Wind
Common words or phrases of nautical origin that have taken on different or metaphorical meanings. Chained_bear and I tossed a coin over who would make the list. I won (or lost, depending on how you...
scuttlebutt, taken aback, brass monkey, boot camp, clean bill of health, three sheets to t..., the devil to pay, between the devil..., by and large, the whole nine yards, mind your ps and qs, slush fund and 116 more...
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Spam Names
Interesting words that came to me in spam emails in the "From" field. Read in pairs by order added, add the initial of your choice, and you'll get a list of "names."
menominee, burbled, abrasives, barrister, unfortunates, strolls, appareled, uncles, removal, elusive, significance, described and 180 more...
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Useful for Prose
Good words I should know, and might employ in prose.
germane, dint, wont, putative, polemic, platitude, ineffable, maunder, laconic, voluble, quintessential, heresy and 52 more...
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Words from The Brothers Karamazov
Vocabulary words.
sententiously, mutton, eunuch, anathema, casuistry, imperturbably, forerunner, birch, torpor, precipice, bravado, insolent and 74 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for mainstay.
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