Learn how to use the verb "Stand"
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| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. My name is Alisha. In this episode, we're going to talk about the verb, "stand." Let's go. |
| The basic definition of the verb, "to stand," is to support yourself on your feet. Examples. "I am not standing." "Don't stand in the street." |
| Here are the conjugations of this verb. Present, stand, stands. Past, stood. Past participle, stood. Progressive, standing. |
| Okay, now, let's talk about some additional meanings of this verb. Meaning one. The first meaning is to tolerate something that's negative or unpleasant. Examples, "I can't stand the sound of her voice." "He can't stand the smell of gasoline." In these two examples, there's something negative, or there's something unpleasant involved. In the first example sentence, it's the sound of her voice. So, by saying, "I can't stand the sound of her voice," it means I can't tolerate this negative experience that is the sound of her voice. In other words, her voice sounds unpleasant. Her voice is negative, I don't like it. I can't stand it. I can't tolerate it. In the second example sentence which was, "He can't stand the smell of gasoline." In that sentence, the smell of gasoline to him, to whoever he is in the sentence, is really unpleasant and he can't tolerate it. He can't stand the smell. He can't tolerate the smell but we use "stand." I can't stand that thing. So, something unpleasant. |
| Let's go to meaning two. Additional meaning two, okay. The next meaning is to be in or to put in a place. Examples. "He's standing next to the tree." "I stood the pictures against the wall." So, in these examples, we use the verb, "stand" like an adverb or a preposition. In the first example, I said, "He's standing," I used the progressive or the continuous, "standing." "He's standing next to a tree." "Next to," there's some positioning word there. "He's standing next to a tree." So, him, here's the tree, next to him. And so, we typically use some kind of preposition or like an adverb word there to describe the relationship. In the second example sentence, we saw the same thing. "I stood the pictures against the wall." So, here, we're using the word, "against." That shows the pictures were stood against. It looks like this. If this is the wall, and these are the pictures, "I stood the pictures against the wall." We could say the pictures, "I leaned the pictures against the wall," I guess. But we also can say, "I stood the pictures against the wall." So, "stood" is like imagine you're standing on your two feet, yes. But the pictures also maybe have like their feet, the bottom of the pictures on the ground, and we lean them, we stand them against the wall, we stand up the object so we can see the picture against the wall. So, we'll use adverbs and prepositions with this meaning of the verb, "to stand." |
| Meaning three. Meaning three is to be at a certain height. Some examples of this, "The tower stands over 400 feet tall." "She stood 170 centimeters tall when she was a teenager." You can probably hear in both of these sentences, I'm talking about height of an object or the height of a person. In the first example sentence, I talked about a tower. "The tower was over 400 feet." So, in the first example sentence, I said, "The tower stands over 400 feet tall." So, I'm using "stands" in the present tense to refer to it's constant condition. So, remember, we use present tense to talk about general facts. So, "The tower stands," it stands. And then, I said, "over 400 feet tall." "Over" means more than, 400 feet is the height, and then, "tall," we use to refer to the height of the object, in general. So, "The tower stands over 400 feet tall." Same thing in the second sentence, "She stood 170 centimeters tall when she was a teenager." So, we're using the measurement. So, "400 feet," "170 centimeters," we follow by "tall" and all of that is preceded by "stand," the verb, "stand." So, "She stood 170 centimeters tall when she was a teenager." That's past tense though. So, we can use "stand" to refer to the height of someone or something. |
| Meaning number four for this verb is to have an opinion. Let's look at some examples. "Where do you stand on gun control?" "I don't know where she stands regarding this issue." This use of the verb, "stand" is something we see a lot in, like politics, in the news, perhaps in policy debates or policy discussions. We use this kind of "stand" to talk about an opinion we have about a specific topic. So we'll follow the verb, "stand" with "on" or perhaps "regarding" or maybe "with regard to." So, in my first example sentence, I talked about gun control as the topic. I said, "Where do you stand on gun control?" So, "Where do you stand on gun control?" "On" in this sentence really means about, but we don't us "about" after the verb, "stand." We don't say "Where do you stand about gun control?" That's not an expression we use. Instead, we use "on." "Where do you stand on gun control?" And also, we typically use an expression like this in very common or very well-known topics. So, if you're debating something that's very, very specific, it's probably not a good idea to use "stand" in that case. We use it for very, very broad topics that most people are familiar with and that most people have an opinion about. So, gun control could be one example. Or maybe, "Where do you stand on environmental issues?" for example. Something like that, a very general well-known topic. |
| In the second sentence, we see the same thing. "I don't know where she stands regarding this issue." So, "regarding" is a formal word meaning about. Again, we don't use "about" here, but regarding is okay to use. The same thing as we saw in the first example sentence, we're introducing like a topic for discussion that is well-known in that condition, in that state. |
| Now, let's look at some variations with the verb, "stand." The first one is "to stand up for oneself," or "to stand up for yourself." This means to defend yourself against attacks, usually verbal attacks. A verbal attack is an attack with words, someone shouting or an argument. Examples of this. "You should stand up for yourself if you know you're right." "The young girl stood up for herself." I want to introduce one that's also very similar to this, which is "to stand up against." That means to defend yourself against a specific enemy or a specific kind of attacker. It can be verbal again. So, examples of this. "I stood up against the scary manager." Or, "He stood up against his greedy landlord." In these examples where we're standing up to someone else or standing up against something else, we're defending ourselves against some kind of negative thing outside us. So, like, "He stood up to his greedy landlord," meaning he defended himself against this person who's trying to take advantage of him or something. Or, "I stood up to the scary manager." That means the manager, there's some kind of negative force there with the manager, but I defended myself against that. We can say, "to stand up against that specific person or that specific enemy" or we can say, "to stand up for yourself." So, "for," introduces the reason, the thing we are defending. So, "I stood up for myself." We can also replace that, like, "I stood up for my mom," "I stood up for my younger brother at school." When you're defending someone else, you can use that expression. |
| The next variation is "to stand out." This means to be noticeable, to be very noticeable. Examples. "Whoa, that guy's hair really stands out." "This candidate really stood out from all the other applicants." "To stand out" meaning to be very noticeable. In these example sentences, maybe this guy has just big hair, and we can really see him easily. We can say, "Whoa, that guy's hair stands out," or maybe he has like bright neon yellow hair or something's that very noticeable about a person. We can say, "Whoa, that person really stands out," like physically, we can see them really, really well. We have that, but we can also use the expression to stand out, to talk about a person skill sets or their abilities. Like when you're reviewing job applications, for example. Like, "Wow, this person has a really amazing skill set. He or she really stands out from the competition," or "She really stands out from the other applicants," for example. So, you can talk about being able to physically notice someone really well. Or you can talk about noticing someone for their skills and their abilities with the verb, "to stand out." |
| Great. Alright. So, those are a few maybe new meanings of the verb, "stand" and some variations for you. Of course, if you know of other ways to use the verb, "stand" or you want to try to make an example sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment section. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs, and we'll see you again soon. Bye. |
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