Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Stage?

\Stage\, n. [OF. estage, F. ['e]tage, (assumed) LL. staticum, from L. stare to stand. See {Stand}, and cf. {Static}.] 1. A floor or story of a house. [Obs.] --Wyclif. 2. An elevated platform on which an orator may speak, a play be performed, an exhibition be presented, or the like. 3. A floor elevated for the convenience of mechanical work, or the like; a scaffold; a staging. 4. A platform, often floating, serving as a kind of wharf. 5. The floor for scenic performances; hence, the theater; the playhouse; hence, also, the profession of representing dramatic compositions; the drama, as acted or exhibited. Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage. --Pope. Lo! Where the stage, the poor, degraded stage, Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age. --C. Sprague. 6. A place where anything is publicly exhibited; the scene of any noted action or carrer; the spot where any remarkable affair occurs. When we are born, we cry that we are come To this stage of fools. --Shak. Music and ethereal mirth Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring. --Miton. 7. The platform of a microscope, upon which an object is placed to be viewed. See Illust. of {Microscope}. 8. A place of rest on a regularly traveled road; a stage house; a station; a place appointed for a relay of horses. 9. A degree of advancement in a journey; one of several portions into which a road or course is marked off; the distance between two places of rest on a road; as, a stage of ten miles. A stage . . . signifies a certain distance on a road. --Jeffrey. He traveled by gig, with his wife, his favorite horse performing the journey by easy stages. --Smiles. 10. A degree of advancement in any pursuit, or of progress toward an end or result. Such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the progress of society. --Macaulay. 11. A large vehicle running from station to station for the accomodation of the public; a stagecoach; an omnibus. ``A parcel sent you by the stage.'' --Cowper. I went in the sixpenny stage. --Swift. 12. (Biol.) One of several marked phases or periods in the development and growth of many animals and plants; as, the larval stage; pupa stage; z[oe]a stage. {Stage box}, a box close to the stage in a theater. {Stage carriage}, a stagecoach. {Stage door}, the actor's and workmen's entrance to a theater. {Stage lights}, the lights by which the stage in a theater is illuminated. {Stage micrometer}, a graduated device applied to the stage of a microscope for measuring the size of an object. {Stage wagon}, a wagon which runs between two places for conveying passengers or goods. {Stage whisper}, a loud whisper, as by an actor in a theater, supposed, for dramatic effect, to be unheard by one or more of his fellow actors, yet audible to the audience; an aside.
\Stage\, v. t. To exhibit upon a stage, or as upon a stage; to display publicly. --Shak.