stay behind

idiom

: to not leave at the present time

You can go on ahead. I'll stay behind to help clean up.

Examples of stay behind in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Workloads can genuinely increase during busy holiday periods when annual leave is rife, but many employees choose to stay behind simply to appear busy, especially in organisations where output is compared against time at the desk. —Alliance Manchester Business School, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025

Instead, their Boeing Starliner spacecraft had issues, causing NASA to bring the vehicle back to Earth without the two astronauts, who would stay behind in space — and as time went by, delay after delay extended their visit, leaving the nation riveted. —Sam Gillette, PEOPLE, 13 Sep. 2025

Though bound for the spa planet Purmantee III, Una has expressed her determination to stay behind and work. —Keith Phipps, Vulture, 4 Sep. 2025

While the queens get ready to hibernate, the wasps that stay behind are working hard to feed themselves. —Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 1 Sep. 2025

Rhymes for stay behind

• countersigned
• disinclined
• humankind
• interlined
• intertwined
• mastermind
• misaligned
• nonaligned
• predefined
• realigned
• reassigned
• recombined