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Reader question: Please explain “stay put” in this sentence: They’re put to work young, and they stay put. My comments: “Stay put” here implies these people keep working on the same jobs. Sounds like the olden days. Back in the olden days here, before the reform took place in the late 1970s, young people, when they graduated from school (if there luckily were schools for them to graduate from, that is), they were given jobs by a State-owned company – all companies in those days were State-owned and so I could be accused of being wordy again – and they would stay on the job till they dropped, i.e. for ever. It was called an iron rice bowl job, meaning they would have it for life. That is, they would not be hopping jobs and moving from city to city as youngsters do today. Not on their own terms at any rate – back in the day, if people did move to another city, they would’ve been sent there, as just another assignment by the company. Anyways, understand “put” in “stay put” as the past participle form of the word “put”, meaning being placed in a certain place to remain. If you, for example, after a little sword play, put the sword back into the box, it’ll stay put in the box. That is, it’ll stay in that fixed position till 2012 if neither you nor anyone else pull it out again before then. Oh, 2012 reminds me of the movie of the same title currently making rounds in town. Quite a few people became worried, albeit perhaps not always sincerely, about the so-called end-of-the-world scenarios told in the movie. | 
