Word.ws English Dictionary

offstand

offstand verb: to endure against; stand or ward off; defend against; withstand; resist.

Verb

offstand (third-person singular simple present offstands, present participle offstanding, simple past and past participle offstood)

  1. (transitive) To endure against; stand or ward off; defend against; withstand; resist.
    • Those who are involved in long enmities sacrifice continually to the hidit in order to offstand such affliction.1919, Roy Franklin Barton, Ifugao economics: Volume 15, Issues 1-5
    • […] announced in its issue of October tenth that New Jersey's Governor, Livingston, had received word of the intended attack and was planning measures to offstand it.1983, Henry Charlton Beck, Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey
  2. (transitive) To offset; compensate for; make restitution for.
    • To offstand the dire effects of its hoarding policy, the Secretary, from March 4, 1885, began lending money to the national banks — that is he deposited it in those institutions.1886, The Current: politics, literature, science and art: Volume 6
    • Smith paid seven thousand pounds for the copyright, though it was not a financial success ; George Eliot, in fact, afterward gave a short story, "Brother Jacob," to offstand the publisher's loss.1913, The Bookman: a review of books and life: Volume 36

Noun

offstand (uncountable)

  1. Offset; restitution.
    • […] but there is partially in a few instances where the person has two-thirds of the away-going crop, and where he has that two-thirds, generally their agreement is that they do not pay any offstand; they have it clear.1886, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, House of Commons papers: Volume 6

Examples of offstand in a sentence

  • […] and hope to build with such permanency and force as to offstand the headwaters which will surely come again.2001, Paulina Ann Batterson, Columbia College:
  • "How can you hope to offstand a score and a half of us?2003, Johnston McCulley, The Mark of Zorro:

Forms of offstand

third-person singular presentoffstands
present participleoffstanding
past participleoffstood
pastoffstood

Origin of offstand

From Middle English ofstonden, from Old English ofstandan (“to remain, persist, continue; restore, make restitution”), from Proto-Germanic *afstandaną, *afstāną, equivalent to off- + stand. Cognate with Dutch afstaan (“to cede, yield, relinquish”), German abstehen (“to project, stick out, stand away”), Swedish avstå (“to refrain, desist, give up, relinquish”).

Questions about offstand

What does offstand mean?
Offstand means to endure against; stand or ward off; defend against; withstand; resist.
How do you use offstand in a sentence?
[…] and hope to build with such permanency and force as to offstand the headwaters which will surely come again.
What part of speech is offstand?
Offstand can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of offstand?
The past tense of offstand is offstood.

Words near offstand in the dictionary

  1. offsprings
  2. offstage
  3. offstaged
  4. offstages
  5. offstaging
  6. offstand
  7. offstanding
  8. offstands
  9. offstood
  10. offstream
  11. offsuit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: offstand (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “offstand.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/offstand. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.