Word.ws English Dictionary

standing back

standing back is the present participle and gerund of stand back.

Meaning of stand back

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To maintain distance.
    • You had better stand back and let me operate the chainsaw.
  2. (intransitive) To abstain from participation.
    • While others debated the proposals, he stood back.
  3. (intransitive) (of a wicket-keeper) to stand a long way behind the wicket so as to catch balls from a fast bowler

Questions about standing back

What is standing back the present participle and gerund of?
Standing back is the present participle and gerund of stand back.

Words near standing back in the dictionary

  1. standing armies
  2. standing army
  3. standing around
  4. standing aside
  5. standing at attention
  6. standing back
  7. standing behind
  8. standing between
  9. standing by
  10. standing cloud
  11. standing clouds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: standing back (page history and authors); stand back (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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Cite this entry: “standing back.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/standing_back. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.