Stay in means to stay at home and not go out. It usually refers to an evening or a weekend when you decide not to go anywhere: Let's stay in tonight. You don't need to add home: in already says it.
Want to use stay in in conversation?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
stay in (= stay at home); stay in + tonight/this weekend; stay in and + verb; stay out (= not come home); stay in + place (= live there for a short time)
- I'm exhausted after this week, so I'm staying in tonight and ordering pizza.
- It's freezing outside; let's stay in and play board games.
- When I was preparing for my exams, I stayed in almost every weekend.
What changed
First versionIt was raining, so we decided to stay in home and watch a film.
RevisionIt was raining, so we decided to stay in and watch a film.
Stay in home is not a correct combination. You can say stay at home, stay home or simply stay in, which already means “at home”. So the extra home was removed.
The opposite of stay in is stay out, “to be out late and not come home”: My parents never let me stay out after eleven. When a place follows stay in, it simply means “to stay somewhere for a short time”: We stayed in a small hotel near the station.
Your turn
I've got a cold, so I'm going to ___ tonight instead of going to the concert.
Show the answer
stay in — Because of a cold, the speaker skips the concert and stays at home: stay in. Stay up means “to go to bed late”, and that is no replacement for going to a concert.
Describe an evening or a weekend when you decided not to go out. Write why you stayed at home and what you did, using stayed in.
Last Saturday I stayed in because it was pouring with rain, and I finally finished a long novel.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.