We establish the nonlinear stability on a timescale O(\varepsilon^{-2}) of a linearly, stably stratified rest state in the inviscid Boussinesq system on \mathbb{R}^2. Here \varepsilon>0 denotes the size of an initially sufficiently small, Sobolev regular and localized perturbation. A similar statement also holds for the related dispersive SQG equation. At the core of this result is a dispersive effect due to anisotropic internal gravity waves. At the linearized level, this gives rise to amplitude decay at a rate of t^{-1/2}, as observed in [EW15]. We establish a refined version of this, and propagate nonlinear control via a detailed analysis of nonlinear interactions using the method of partial symmetries developed in [GPW23].
