Word.ws English Dictionary

stand in the gate

stand in the gate verb: to occupy a place or position of advantage, power, or defence.

Verb

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

  1. (dated, idiomatic) To occupy a place or position of advantage, power, or defence.
    • "What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird[2]—and a baird there is, and that's the worst of it yet!" she...1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC

Forms of stand in the gate

third-person singular presentstands in the gate
present participlestanding in the gate
past participlestood in the gate
paststood in the gate
alternative formstand in the gates

Questions about stand in the gate

What does stand in the gate mean?
Stand in the gate means to occupy a place or position of advantage, power, or defence.
What part of speech is stand in the gate?
Stand in the gate is a verb.
What is the past tense of stand in the gate?
The past tense of stand in the gate is stood in the gate.

Words near stand in the gate in the dictionary

  1. stand in good stead
  2. stand in one's own light
  3. stand in one's value
  4. stand in someone's shoes
  5. stand in the gap
  6. stand in the gate
  7. stand in the way
  8. stand ins
  9. stand of arms
  10. stand off
  11. stand on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stand in the gate (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 in the gate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stand_in_the_gate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.