Word.ws English Dictionary

stand on the shoulders of giants

stand on the shoulders of giants verb: to build on the achievements of others before one.

Verb

stand on the shoulders of giants (third-person singular simple present stands on the shoulders of giants, present participle standing on the shoulders of giants, simple past and past participle stood on the shoulders of giants)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To build on the achievements of others before one.
    • If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.1675 February 5, Isaac Newton, “Newton to Hooke”, in H. W. Turnbull, editor, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Volume I: 1661–1675, Cambridge University Press, published 1959, page 416
    • In this 200th anniversary year of our Constitution, you and I stand on the shoulders of giants—men whose words and deeds put wind in the sails of freedom.1987 January 27, Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address

Examples of stand on the shoulders of giants in a sentence

  • "In the western scientific tradition we stand on the shoulders of giants," says Young, echoing both Torvalds and Sir Isaac Newton before him.2002, Sam Williams, chapter 10, in Free as in Freedom, →ISBN:
  • It is useful, though, to remember the conclusion of the maxim: we stand on the shoulders of giants to see better and farther than they.2007, C. M. C. Green, Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, page xv:

Forms of stand on the shoulders of giants

third-person singular presentstands on the shoulders of giants
present participlestanding on the shoulders of giants
past participlestood on the shoulders of giants
paststood on the shoulders of giants

Origin of stand on the shoulders of giants

Extracted from dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants. Often attributed to Isaac Newton (see quotations), but in other forms already in use earlier.

Words formed from stand on the shoulders of giants

Questions about stand on the shoulders of giants

What does stand on the shoulders of giants mean?
Stand on the shoulders of giants means to build on the achievements of others before one.
How do you use stand on the shoulders of giants in a sentence?
"In the western scientific tradition we stand on the shoulders of giants," says Young, echoing both Torvalds and Sir Isaac Newton before him.
What part of speech is stand on the shoulders of giants?
Stand on the shoulders of giants is a verb.
What is the past tense of stand on the shoulders of giants?
The past tense of stand on the shoulders of giants is stood on the shoulders of giants.

Words near stand on the shoulders of giants in the dictionary

  1. stand on one's head
  2. stand on one's own bottom
  3. stand on one's own two feet
  4. stand on someone's shoulders
  5. stand on the shoulders of
  6. stand on the shoulders of giants
  7. stand on velvet
  8. stand one's ground
  9. stand one's hand
  10. stand out
  11. stand out a mile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stand on the shoulders of giants (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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