prepositions – “Stay home” or “stay at home” – which is correct and why? – English Language Learners Stack Exchange

People used to think that prepositions had to come before a noun. However, in 1924 a writer called Otto Jespersen realised that prepositions are always prepositions, even if we don’t use them with a noun. He also realised that some prepositions never come before nouns.

It took a long time for people to change their thinking. Now, if you look in a modern grammar such as:

• The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language Huddleston & Pullum, 2002
• Oxford Modern English Grammar, Aarts, 2011

… you will see that prepositions are a class of words like nouns, verbs and adjectives. It doesn’t matter what kind of words we find them with.

Home in English, is a preposition. There is another word home which is a noun. We can use prepositions and preposition phrases as the complement of the verb BE:

• She is in
• She is in the bath
• She is out
• She is inside
• She is inside the shop
• She is away
• She is around
• She is about
• She is abroad
• She is home

Prepositions can take other preposition phrases as a complement. In other words we often use two prepositions together:

• She is out of touch
• She is away from her desk
• She is round about somewhere
• She is at home

The Original Posters examples

The verb STAY usually takes a locative complement. Usually this complement is a preposition phrase. The word at and home are both prepositions. The sentences:

• Stay home
• Stay at home

… are both grammatical.

The preposition to is unusual because we usually need to use it with a noun. So we see:

• Go to work
• Go to the shop
• Go to a concert

The word to can’t usually come before another preposition:

• *Go to inside
• *Go to away
• *Go to out
• *Go to abroad
• *Go to home
• *Go to at home

Notice, though that if we use the noun home instead of the preposition home, then we can use the preposition to

• Go to my home
• Go to different homes in the area
• Go to homes before you buy them
• I went to an old peoples home.

Hope this is helpful!