Word.ws English Dictionary

standing in the gate

standing in the gate is the present participle and gerund of stand in the gate.

Meaning of stand in the gate

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

Questions about standing in the gate

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

Words near standing in the gate in the dictionary

  1. standing in for
  2. standing in one's own light
  3. standing in one's value
  4. standing in someone's shoes
  5. standing in the gap
  6. standing in the gate
  7. standing in the way
  8. standing joke
  9. standing jokes
  10. standing mile
  11. standing miles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: standing in the gate (page history and authors); 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.

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