Meaning & use
remain
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Meanings
verblinking
To stay in the same condition or situation and not change.
Grammar: Followed by an adjective or noun: remain calm, remain a mystery.
Patterns
- remain calm
- remain a mystery
Please remain calm and walk to the exit.
The cause of the fire remains a mystery.
She remained silent throughout the meeting.
verbintransitiveformal
To stay in a place and not leave it.
Grammar: No object; often with a place: remain in the room.
Patterns
- remain in somewhere
- remain at somewhere
Passengers must remain in their seats during landing.
He remained at the office until midnight.
The family remained in the village for years.
verbintransitive
To be left after the rest has gone, been used or been removed.
Grammar: No object; often with few, little or nothing: nothing remained.
Patterns
- something remains
- little remains
Only a few cookies remained on the plate.
After the flood, little remained of the house.
Several questions remain unanswered.
verbintransitiveformal
To be still to be done or dealt with.
Grammar: Often followed by to be plus a past participle: it remains to be seen.
Patterns
- it remains to be seen
- much remains to be done
It remains to be seen whether the plan will work.
Much work remains to be done on the bridge.
Little remains but to say thank you.
Word forms
| third person singular | remains |
|---|---|
| past tense | remained |
| past participle | remained |
| -ing form | remaining |
Common combinations
- remain silent
- The suspect remained silent.
- remain unchanged
- The rules remain unchanged.
- remain calm
- Try to remain calm in an emergency.
- remain to be seen
- Whether he can win remains to be seen.
- remain seated
- Please remain seated until the plane stops.
Synonyms and how they differ
- stay
- Stay is the everyday word and less formal than remain.
- persist
- Persist suggests continuing despite difficulty, while remain simply continues.
- linger
- Linger suggests staying a bit too long, often after others have gone.
- endure
- Endure suggests lasting through hardship over a long time.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: remain or remind?
remain vs remind
Remind means to make someone remember, while remain means to stay. They look similar but are unrelated in meaning.
Practice
Which sentence uses remain correctly?
Choose one answer.
Remain here acts as a linking verb followed by the adjective calm. An adverb, infinitive or preposition does not fit.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “remain”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.