Word.ws English Dictionary

stand up on one's hind legs

stand up on one's hind legs verb: to act boldly; to take responsibility.

Verb

stand up on one's hind legs (third-person singular simple present stands up on one's hind legs, present participle standing up on one's hind legs, simple past and past participle stood up on one's hind legs)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To act boldly; to take responsibility.
    • I copied them out of an American Automobile Association report because I'm on the spot for a talk at the Kiwanis Club luncheon next week, and I've found that whenever you've got to stand up on your hind legs and expose your ignorance the best thing you can do is put down a nice thick smoke screen...1941, Popular Science, volume 138, number 3, page 140
    • We became the nation we are on principles of individual initiative, to stand up on our hind legs and lick them if they needed it, and they called it jingoism at one time, […]1957, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Building a World of Free Peoples: Hearings..., page 539

Forms of stand up on one's hind legs

third-person singular presentstands up on one's hind legs
present participlestanding up on one's hind legs
past participlestood up on one's hind legs
paststood up on one's hind legs

Questions about stand up on one's hind legs

What does stand up on one's hind legs mean?
Stand up on one's hind legs means to act boldly; to take responsibility.
What part of speech is stand up on one's hind legs?
Stand up on one's hind legs is a verb.
What is the past tense of stand up on one's hind legs?
The past tense of stand up on one's hind legs is stood up on one's hind legs.

Words near stand up on one's hind legs in the dictionary

  1. stand up and be counted
  2. stand up and give it to him
  3. stand up for
  4. stand up guy
  5. stand up guys
  6. stand up on one's hind legs
  7. stand up paddleboarding
  8. stand up to
  9. stand up to be counted
  10. stand up to one's lick log
  11. stand up with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stand up on one's hind legs (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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