Word.ws English Dictionary

stand at attention

stand at attention verb: to stand straight with eyes forward and feet together.

Verb

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

  1. To stand straight with eyes forward and feet together.
    • It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn
  2. (humorous) To have an erection.

Forms of stand at attention

third-person singular presentstands at attention
present participlestanding at attention
past participlestood at attention
paststood at attention
alternative formstand to attention

Questions about stand at attention

What does stand at attention mean?
Stand at attention means to stand straight with eyes forward and feet together.
What part of speech is stand at attention?
Stand at attention is a verb.
What is the past tense of stand at attention?
The past tense of stand at attention is stood at attention.

Words near stand at attention in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stand at attention (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-stand at attention.wav.

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