the.com/mainstay
The rope that keeps the mast up, now stretched to mean whatever keeps you standing.
means The main person or thing that something depends on to keep functioning.
from Straight from sailing ships: the 'mainstay' was the heavy rope or cable running from the top of the mainmast down to the deck or bow, bracing it against the pull of the sails. Lose the mainstay and the mast could go over. By the 1700s the word had drifted ashore into figurative use — a person or thing that holds everything else up, no rigging required.
- origin
- nautical term for the main mast support rope
- literal meaning
- the heaviest, most critical stay on a ship
- modern use
- applied to people, dishes, songs, habits
- irony
- calls something essential by sounding utterly boring