Word.ws English Dictionary

stand around

stand around verb: to stand without doing anything; to do nothing productive; to waste time.

Verb

stand around (third-person singular simple present stands around, present participle standing around, simple past and past participle stood around)

  1. (intransitive) To stand without doing anything; to do nothing productive; to waste time.
    • Why are some people working and some are standing around?
    • We've just been standing around until you got here.

Forms of stand around

third-person singular presentstands around
present participlestanding around
past participlestood around
paststood around

Questions about stand around

What does stand around mean?
Stand around means to stand without doing anything; to do nothing productive; to waste time.
What part of speech is stand around?
Stand around is a verb.
What is the past tense of stand around?
The past tense of stand around is stood around.

Words near stand around in the dictionary

  1. stand
  2. stand a chance
  3. stand and be counted
  4. stand and deliver
  5. stand and stir
  6. stand around
  7. stand aside
  8. stand at attention
  9. stand back
  10. stand behind
  11. stand between

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stand around (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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