stay the course

• stay the distance

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stay the course (third-person singular simple present stays the course, present participle staying the course, simple past and past participle stayed the course)

1. (idiomatic) To persist or continue.

   If you decide to stay the course and finish engineering school, it will mean long hours and sleepless nights.

   • 1962 August, G. Freeman Allen, “Traffic control on the Great Northern Line”, in Modern Railways, page 132:

     This sort of thing is meat and drink to the born Controller—and Controllers are born with the right imperturbable temperament for the job; hence the fact that they are recruited from many different grades of operating staff, and some recruits don't stay the course.

• go the distance
• stay the distance

• “stay the course”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “stay the course”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “stay the course” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.