Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use standstill in a sentence

20 example sentences · noun

Standstill means a complete immobility; a halt. Example: “The wreck brought traffic to a standstill for hours.”

Examples of standstill by meaning

nounA complete immobility; a halt.

  • The wreck brought traffic to a standstill for hours.
  • Despite all these precautions, however, severe storms sometimes caused drifts which brought traffic completely to a standstill.1955 December, H. A. Vallance, “The Highland Centenary—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 859
  • For the caller the advantage relies on a fast solution of his service request, leading to less standstill and non-productive periods for the service customer.2012, James C. Spohrer, Louis E. Freund, Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering

More sentences with standstill

  • The lorry is blocking off the road, so traffic has come to a standstill.From the entry block off
  • Telfer’s book waltz right by societal rules that would leave the rest of us at a standstill.2021 February 25, Mara Altman, “Glitzy, Tragic and Selfish: Female Con Artists Waltz by Society’s Rules”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry waltz
  • She fights Mad Max to a standstill even though she’s only got one arm.2017 December 1, Tom Breihan, “Mad Max: Fury Road Might Already be the Best Action Movie Ever Made”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the…. From the entry badass
  • A splunk, like a rock hitting water, brought him to a standstill, straining to hear.2004, Ramona Crawford, Sabrina Says, page 162. From the entry splunk
  • Our tests (see photos) proved that the standard axle offers higher stability at or near standstill.1969 November, Popular Science, volume 195, number 5, page 123. From the entry antispin
  • At the moment much industry of the Wu-han Cities is at a standstill.1948 March, W. Robert Moore, “Along the Yangtze, Main Street of China”, in National Geographic Magazine, volume XCIII, number 3, →ISSN…. From the entry Wu-Han
  • By December 4 the advance upon Changsha had come to a standstill.1944, Philip Graves, The Seventeenth Quarter, Hutchinson & Co., pages 157–158. From the entry Taoyuan
  • Just the suggestion that a good blueberry patch was near would bring everything to a standstill.1940 November, “Notes and News: Railway Operation Ad Lib”, in Railway Magazine, pages 611–612. From the entry patch
  • For more than a week, the campaign seemed to be at a standstill while various courts sorted out challenges and counterchallenges.2007 April 23, Jonathan P. Hicks, “With Only Days to Stump, 3 Seek Brooklyn Council Seat”, in New York Times. From the entry counterchallenge
  • At the moment, Cora was basically at a standstill, manwise, somewhere between the next to come and the last to go.1995, Carrie Fisher, Delusions of Grandma. From the entry manwise
  • The same snow lies over the fens and marshes and freezes Quixote's windmills to a standstill against the cindery Flemish sky.1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy. From the entry cindery
  • Only once was Judge Taylor ever seen at a dead standstill in open court, and the Cunninghams stopped him.1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC. From the entry stamping ground
  • That evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill.1911, Rudyard Kipling, “In the Same Boat”, in A Diversity of Creatures, London: Macmillan and Co., […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 90. From the entry pair-oar
  • Millions were stuck at home in China's Chengdu on Friday after a handful of Covid-19 cases brought the megacity to a standstill.2022 September 2, “Millions locked down in China's Chengdu over Covid outbreak”, in France 24, sourced from Beijing (AFP), archived from…. From the entry Chengdu
  • The innovative twistgrip has yet another trick: from a standstill, twisting the grip forward activates reverse, helping the rider (slowly) back out of a tight parking space.2007 December 9, Dexter Ford, “Electric Glide: Passing Pumps on a Scooter”, in New York Times. From the entry twistgrip
  • The scooter swerved into a fruit stall and came to a standstill under a heap of bananas, while the scooterist found himself in the arms of an indignant fruitseller.2003, Ruskin Bond, Rusty: The Boy from the Hills, Puffin Book, published 2003, →ISBN, page 46. From the entry fruitseller
  • Vast freighters, under whose unimaginable mass the Gargantuanly braced and latticed and trussed docks yielded visibly and groaningly, crushed to a standstill and disgorged their varied cargoes.1940 January, E[dward] E[lmer] Smith, “Gray Lensman; Part IV: Conclusion”, in Astounding Science-Fiction, volume XXIV, number 5, New York…. From the entry gargantuanly

Meaning of standstill

  1. noun A complete immobility; a halt.

Full definition of standstill

Questions about standstill in a sentence

How do you use standstill in a sentence?
Standstill is used as a noun. For example: “The wreck brought traffic to a standstill for hours.”
What is a short sentence with standstill?
“The wreck brought traffic to a standstill for hours.”
What does standstill mean?
Standstill means a complete immobility; a halt.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: standstill (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use standstill in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/standstill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.