Stare

How to spell stare

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stare

What does stare mean?

1. verbTo look fixedly at someone or something for a long time, often with wide-open eyes.
2. nounA long, fixed look at someone or something.

Stare in a sentence

• verb

  It is rude to stare at strangers on the train.

• noun

  She gave the late arrival a cold stare across the room.

• verb

  The cat would stare at the empty doorway for hours.

• noun

  His blank stare suggested he had not heard the question.

Where does stare come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb starian, which meant 'to gaze fixedly' or 'to look with wide-open eyes'. It belongs to a wide family of related Germanic words, including the Dutch staren and the German starren, all of which share the underlying sense of rigidity and fixity; the same ancient root gives us 'stark' and 'starch', words tied to the idea of being stiff or rigid. The connection is intuitive once you notice it: a fixed, unblinking look is the eyes held stiff and still. The spelling settled with the silent final 'e' that English commonly adds to mark the long vowel, which is also what neatly separates 'stare' on the page from its homophone 'stair', the step you climb. Because the two words sound identical, the only reliable guide is meaning: 'stare' is the long, fixed look, while 'stair' belongs to a staircase.

How the word is built

• stare (from Old English starian: to gaze fixedly)

Words that sound like stare

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• stair: A single step, or one of a series of steps, used for moving between different levels of a building.