a. and sb. [f. STAY v.1]
A. adj. That stays at home, not given to travelling or to gadding abroad; hence untravelled.
1806. G. Pinckard, Tour W. Indies, III. 342. The extravagant alarm pictured by the fearful imaginations of stay-at-home travellers.
1814. Jane Austen, Mansf. Park, v. A talking pretty young woman like Miss Crawford is always pleasant society to an indolent, stay-at-home man.
1819. in Lady Morgan’s Autobiog. (1859), 326. I went to bed most depressed, and in admiration of your stay-at-home wisdom.
1881. O. W. Holmes, Sweet Little Man, 35. In the brigade of the Stay-at-Home Rangers Marches my corps.
1902. Cornish, Naturalist Thames, 152. It is in the woods that the stay-at-home birds are most in evidence in winter.
B. sb. One who stays at home, one not given to travelling or gadding abroad.
1841. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, i. Sixty-six years ago a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition.
1855. Kingsley, Westw. Ho! xx. If some of you young gentlemen would … go forth to find us stay-at-homes new markets for our ware.
So also (nonce-words) Stay-at-homeativeness, -itiveness (mimicking phrenological terms), Stay-at-homeishness.
1818. T. L. Peacock, Maid Marian, i. Domesticity, or as learned doctors call it—the faculty of stayathomeitiveness.
1826. Westm. Rev., VI. 327. Their un-Italianized countrymen, who are endowed with Spurzheim’s bump, denominated stayathomeativeness.
1880. Daily Tel., 22 Sept., 5/5. The general tenour of English art-life only too forcibly illustrates our national tendency towards ‘stay-at-homeishness.’
