stake

Pluralstakes

Formsstakes, staking, staked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A long, slender piece of wood or metal, pointed at one end so it can be driven into the ground as a marker or support.

   The surveyor drove a stake at each corner to mark the property line.

   Climbers anchored their tent with metal stakes hammered deep into the snow.

   Similarpost, peg, pole, picket, stick

   Note

   The plain post at the root of the word: Old English staca meant "pin, tack, stake," so the word once covered small fastenings as well as posts. The verb that goes with it is drive. Surveyors drive stakes to fix a boundary, and the verb of fencing with stakes turns the object into action. It can be sharpened, too, as in Dryden's Ovid (1717): "A sharpened stake strong Dryas found."

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The money or valuables risked on the outcome of a bet, game, or contest.

   He lost his whole stake on a single hand of poker.

   The pot grew as each gambler added to the stakes.

   Similarbet, wager, ante

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A share or financial interest in a business, or a personal interest in how a situation turns out.

   The investor bought a forty percent stake in the startup.

   Local families hold a real stake in the outcome of the election.

   Similarshare, interest, holding, investment

   Note

   Business English measures this stake in percentages and holds it in something: managers earn a stake in the business, a state railway holds a 55% stake in an operator. It differs from the gambler's stake in how the risk runs. A wager is laid down and won or lost at once; a share is held, and its value rides on how the venture fares over time.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To risk money or something valuable on the success of a competition or a future outcome.

   She staked a month's wages on the championship match.

   Gamblers often stake more than they can afford to lose.

   Similarbet, wager, hazard

   Note

   What is put up need not be money. In Alexander Pope's first Pastoral (1709), a shepherd stakes his lamb on the outcome of a singing match. The construction is stake something on an outcome, a pattern bet and wager share. The thing risked takes its name from the same word: it is the wager itself.

5. 5
   nouncountablewith the

   The wooden post to which a person condemned to death was tied to be burned alive.

   In 1431, Joan of Arc was bound to the stake and burned before a crowd at Rouen.

   The condemned woman faced the stake without flinching.

   Note

   It almost always takes the definite article: people are burned at the stake or go to the stake, never to a stake. The second phrase names the sentence as much as the timber. Rollo Ahmed's The Black Art (1936) uses it for the lonely old women accused as witches who "went to the stake," whose only crimes, he writes, were loneliness and a lack of beauty.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To fasten, support, defend, or mark out an area with pointed posts driven into the ground.

   The farmer staked the saplings so they would grow straight.

   Workers stake the vines each spring to support the growing fruit.

   Similarsupport, prop, brace

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To provide someone with the money they need to gamble or to start a business venture.

   The investor staked the young chef to launch his first restaurant.

   Friends pooled their savings to stake him in the new venture.

   Similarback, bankroll, finance, fund, sponsor

   Note

   Here the object is the person, not the money: you stake a friend, and the sum can follow as a second object, as in "his family staked him $10,000." That reverses the risking sense, where the money itself is what gets staked. The backer still carries the risk, which is how the two meanings stay related.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To pierce or wound a person or creature by driving a pointed stake through the body.

   The villagers staked the corpse to keep it from rising again.

   According to folklore, a hero must stake the monster before sunrise.

   Similarimpale, transfix, skewer

   Note

   The wound need not be deliberate. In George Eliot's Silas Marner (1861), a rider stakes a horse by putting it at a hedge with stakes in it, so this is a riding accident rather than an attack. Modern fiction leans the other way: in A. J. Gallant's Dracula: Hearts of Stone (2014), a vampire is staked on purpose, and that is the use most readers now meet.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To deposit and lock up a sum of cryptocurrency in order to take part in verifying transactions on a proof-of-stake network.

   Validators stake large amounts of tokens to secure the blockchain.

   He staked his holdings to earn rewards on the network.

   Note

   The verb takes its name from the system it serves, proof of stake, where a deposit of coins is the pledge that earns the right to validate transactions. Elad Elrom's The Blockchain Developer (2019) still calls such participants miners. He describes two routes: staking coins through a trustworthy node, or running a full node of one's own.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    An upright post or bar set into a socket at the side or end of a cart, flatbed, or trailer to keep goods from falling off.

    Workers fitted tall stakes along both sides of the flatbed to hold the stacked pipes.

    A loose stake let part of the load shift during the turn.

    Similarupright, post, stanchion

    Note

    Here the stake need not be wood at all. Steel channel or angle stock does the same job, dropped upright into a loop, eye or mortise at the edge of the bed. Set in a row and joined into a grid, the stakes become the sides of a stakebody, the stake-walled body of a cart, flatcar or flatbed trailer.

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