Dictionary

upstay en · VERB

Etymology

From up- + stay.

Meanings

1. (archaic) To sustain, support.
   • 1917, Henry Charles Beeching, The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, 246, The Tree of Life Lighten, O sword divine, to clear my way, / And thou, O happy heart, upstay
   • Close to the vital seat of human clay; / Glad meetings, tender partings, that upstay 1820, The River Duddon A Series of Sonnets, XXVIII, Journey Renewed
   • In front, a massive gateway threats the sky, / And posts of solid adamant upstay / An iron tower, firm-planted to defy / All force, divine or human. Night and day, 1910, The Aeneid of Virgil as translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor
   • those two villeins, which her steps vpstayd, / When her weake feete could scarcely her sustaine, / And fading vitall powers gan to fade, / Her forward still with torture did constraine […] 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

Forms