Subscriber login


Forgot your password?

Library card login

Other

stale1

Pronunciation: /steɪl/

Translate stale | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of stale

adjective (staler, stalest)

  • (of food) no longer fresh and pleasant to eat; hard, musty, or dry:stale bread
  • no longer new and interesting or exciting:their marriage had gone stale
  • [predic.] (of a person) no longer able to perform well or creatively because of having done something for too long:a top executive tends to get stale
  • (of a cheque or legal claim) invalid because out of date: justifications for adverse possession go beyond stale claims

verb

  • make or become stale: [no object]:she would cut up yesterday’s leftover bread, staling now

Derivatives

stalely

adverb

staleness

noun

Origin:

Middle English (describing beer in the sense 'clear from long standing, strong'): probably from Anglo-Norman French and Old French, from estaler 'to halt'; compare with the verb stall

stale in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of stale in the US English dictionary

Nearby words

  |  Cite

Word of the day

merrythought

/ /
noun
the wishbone of a bird …