1. A raised and level floor or platform.
2. 1. A raised platform on which theatrical performances are presented.
   2. An area in which actors perform.
   3. The acting profession, or the world of theater. Used with the: The stage is her life.
3. The scene of an event or of a series of events.
4. A platform on a microscope that supports a slide for viewing.
5. A scaffold for workers.
6. A resting place on a journey, especially one providing overnight accommodations.
7. The distance between stopping places on a journey; a leg: proceeded in easy stages.
8. A stagecoach.
9. A level or story of a building.
10. The height of the surface of a river or other fluctuating body of water above a set point: at flood stage.
11. 1. A level, degree, or period of time in the course of a process: the toddler stage of child development; the early stages of a disease.
    2. A point in the course of an action or series of events: too early to predict a winner at this stage.
12. One of two or more successive propulsion units of a rocket vehicle that fires after the preceding one has been jettisoned.
13. Geology. A subdivision in the classification of stratified rocks, ranking just below a series and representing rock formed during a chronological age.
14. Electronics. An element or a group of elements in a complex arrangement of parts, especially a single tube or transistor and its accessory components in an amplifier.

1. To exhibit or present on or as if on a stage: stage a boxing match.
2. To produce or direct (a theatrical performance).
3. To arrange and carry out: stage an invasion.
4. Medicine. To determine the extent or progression of (a cancer, for example).

1. To be adaptable to or suitable for theatrical presentation.
2. To stop at a designated place in the course of a journey: "tourists from London who had staged through Warsaw" (Frederick Forsyth).

[Middle English, from Old French estage, from Vulgar Latin *staticum, from Latin status, past participle of stāre, to stand.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.