Stay in Morse Code: ... - .- -.--

Stay in Morse code is ... - .- -.-- (S-T-A-Y). In International Morse, it has a single space between the letters. The word splits evenly into five dots and five dashes, which is why it looks balanced on a wristband or a line of ink. It opens on the three quick dots of S and ends on Y, the longest letter in the word.

Press Play above to hear it at 14 words per minute, switch to Flash to send it with the screen, or copy the pattern for a note or a chat.

To say stay in Morse code out loud, read each letter as dits and dahs: di-di-dit, dah, di-dah, dah-di-dah-dah. Operators voice a dot as "di" inside a letter and "dit" when it is the last signal, which is why S ends on "dit" and A does not.

Two of the letters, and a near neighbor of the third, are common on their own in operating use: S is the start of SOS, T is sometimes keyed for a cut zero in numeric groups, and K (which Y becomes when its final dash drops) is the invitation to transmit. Each letter above links to its own page with the sound and timing bar.

STAY runs for 35 timing units, so how long it lasts depends only on the speed you pick. Morse timing is a set of proportions: a dot is 1 unit, a dash is 3, the gap inside a letter is 1, and the gap between letters is 3. A word gap, which this single word never needs, is 7.

Y alone takes 13 of the 35 units, more than a third of the word. If you count aloud while sending, give that last letter its full "dah-di-dah-dah" before you stop.

Any on-off signal carries STAY as long as the proportions survive: a dash three times a dot, a letter break three times the gap inside a letter.

Whistles and horns follow the same rule with short and long notes, which is how "stay back" or "stay put" gets across a noisy site when a voice cannot.

Most wrong copies of stay are spacing errors, not wrong letters, because T is a single dash with nothing to anchor it. These are the failures that produce a real word or letter instead of obvious noise.

The first row is the one to check on a bracelet or a tattoo, because the drift is small: a T followed by a dot-dash only stays a T when the gap before the next letter is visibly wider than the gap inside A. On a strand that is the spacer bead's job; on skin it is the artist's; on the air it is yours.

Stay and wait are different words with different patterns: STAY begins with S (three dots) and WAIT begins with W (dot-dash-dash). Operators also have a single-character "wait": the prosign AS, sent joined as .-..., which is a pause request rather than the spelled word.

Adding a word never changes STAY itself. The slash marks a seven-unit silence, and everything before it is the same ... - .- -.-- you copy from the top of this page.

For a command sent by light at night, two short words with a long dark gap between them are easier to read than one long one.

On a strand, stay is 13 code beads: 5 round dot beads, 5 long dash beads and 3 spacers between the letters, with no ring because there is no second word. Press Bracelet under "Make it yours" to see the layout, then open the bracelet generator to add a name or date and save the stringing guide.

Drawn to Morse proportions, the word is 35 dot-widths end to end, so the dot size you choose sets the length of the tattoo.

Export the Tattoo preset as SVG, print it at the final size, and hand the artist the file rather than a photo so the T-to-A gap survives. The tattoo generator adds spine and vertical layouts; type the finished design's dots and dashes into the decoder before the appointment.