stand-to
stand-to noun: a state of readiness assumed by ground troops at dawn and dusk in wartime.
Noun
stand-to (plural stands-to or stand-tos)
- A state of readiness assumed by ground troops at dawn and dusk in wartime.
- "Stand-to" at dusk for about an hour, work all night, "stand-to" for an hour before dawn. That's the general programme.1915, Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, (1929), Penguin Modern Classics 1960, p. 86
Verb
stand-to (third-person singular simple present stands-to, present participle standing-to, simple past and past participle stood-to)
- To assume such a state of readiness.
- I passed the word along the line for the company to stand-to arms. The N.C.O's whispered hoarsely into the dug-outs: ‘Stand-to, stand-to,’ and out the men tumbled with their rifles in their hands.1929 November, Robert Graves, chapter XII, in Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 141
Forms of stand-to
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | stands-to |
| plural | stand-tos |
| alternative form | stand to |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | stands-to |
| present participle | standing-to |
| past participle | stood-to |
| past | stood-to |
Origin of stand-to
Ellipsis of stand-to-arms.
Questions about stand-to
- What does stand-to mean?
- Stand-to means a state of readiness assumed by ground troops at dawn and dusk in wartime.
- What part of speech is stand-to?
- Stand-to can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of stand-to?
- The plural of stand-to is stands-to.
Words near stand-to in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stand-to (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “stand-to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stand-to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.