stet

Borrowed from Latin stet (“let it stand”), an inflection of stō (“I stand”).

• IPA^(key): /stɛt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

stet (plural stets)

1. A symbol used by proofreaders and typesetters to indicate that a word or phrase that was crossed out should still remain.
   • 2003 November 6, Lynne Truss, “Introduction – The Seventh Sense”, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, London: Profile Books Ltd, →ISBN, pages 31–32:

     [O]ne particular sub-editor […] would proof-read my book reviews and archly insert literally dozens of little commas – each one of which I felt as a dart in my flesh. […] I would thank her, glance at the blizzard of marks on the galley proof, wait for her to leave the room, and then (standing up to get a better run at it) attack the proof, feverishly crossing out everything she had added, and writing “STET”, “STET”, “STET”, “STET”, “STET” all down the page, until my arm got tired and I was spent.

   • 2005, Douglas Rushkoff, "Commodified vs. Commoditized", 2005-09-04:[1]

     And my copyeditors at HarperCollins want me to use the word “commodified” exclusively, since it’s the only one in Websters. But I see the words as very different, and have issued a big STET on that one.

Usually used by writing and circling the word stet above or beside the unwanted edit and underscoring the selection with dashes or dots. Alternatively, a circled checkmark may be used in the margin.

stet (third-person singular simple present stets, present participle stetting, simple past and past participle stetted)

1. (transitive) To let (edited material) stand, or remain as it was.

   Stet that colon.

   • 1993 November 4, Nicholson Baker, “Survival of the Fittest”, in The New York Review of Books‎, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 March 2024:

     Truly, American copy-editing has fallen into a state of demoralized confusion over hyphenated and unhyphenated compounds—or at least, I am demoralized and confused, having just gone through the manuscript of a novel in which a very smart and careful and goodnatured copy-editor has deleted about two hundred of my innocent tinkertoy hyphens. I wrote “stet hyphen” in the margin so many times that I finally abbreviated it to “SH”—but there was no wicked glee in my intransigence: I didn’t want to be the typical prose prima donna who made her life difficult.

• stet docket
• stet processus

• ETTs, Etts, TEST, TETS, TETs, Test, Tets, sett, test, tets

Middle High German stæte, Old High German stāti, ultimately from the root of stehen (“to stand”). Cognate with Bavarian stad.

• IPA^(key): /ʃteːt/

• Audio

  (file)

stet (strong nominative masculine singular steter, not comparable)

1. steady
2. constant, continuous
   • 1909, Lily Braun, chapter 15, in Memoiren einer Sozialistin [Memoirs of a Socialist]‎, Lehrjahre, München: Albert Langen:

     Im Grunde hast du ja recht — ganz recht — aber es war doch nur meine große Liebe zu dir — die stete Angst, die deine zu verlieren, […]

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

3. perpetual

• stets

• “stet” in Duden online
• “stet” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /stet/, [s̠t̪ɛt̪]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /stet/, [st̪ɛt̪]

stet

1. third-person singular present active subjunctive of stō

• stare
• statio
• status