staid

UK/steɪd/US/steɪd/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,577 of 15,258leans written

Staid means settled, serious and rather dull. A staid old firm, staid and respectable, rather staid.

It is a criticism dressed as a description, since calling an institution staid says it has stopped changing. It is an old spelling of stayed, and the sense of somebody who has settled in place is exactly right.

Definitions of staid

1adjectivestaidSettled, serious and rather dull.C2
“Her staid old uncle wore the same grey suit every day and never told a joke.”

staid is a quality.

Where it comes from

An old spelling of stayed, the past participle of stay, used as an adjective.

Proto-Indo-European
*steh₂-
English, today
staid

From an obsolete spelling of stayed, the past participle of stay, used as an adjective.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

staid in the wild

Although fashion brands such as Hysteric Glamour and Ba-tsu opened their first boutiques there, originally its interior was more staid and conventional for the times.
Laforet
Each show tended to have a theme; Goofy's emergence as the staid everyman character for example.
Mouseterpiece Theater
WCT also strongly encouraged the audience to cheer for players, rather than politely applaud, as the more staid tennis audiences had done before.
World Championship Tennis
Sporting distinctive two-tone paintwork, a bikini fairing and a new tail, the R90S was intended to shrug off the enduring image of BMW bikes as staid and utilitarian.
BMW R90S
The measure resulted in an especially tumultuous debate in the usually staid upper house, providing a challenge to Charbonneau to maintain decorum.
Guy Charbonneau

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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