stays
noun/steɪz/
1
A corset.
- Her face was whiter than snow, and her heart was throbbing through her stays.(p. 502)
- “Listen! I see it all — down, down even to the stays! Such stays! Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel — or list is it? — that they put into the tops of those fearful things. I can draw you a picture of them.”1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 20:
1 more example
- Her throat was contracted, her breasts strove against the enlacement of her stays, she was about to weep.1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 181: