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standing on the shoulders of giants

standing on the shoulders of giants is the present participle and gerund of stand on the shoulders of giants.

Meaning of stand on the shoulders of giants

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

Questions about standing on the shoulders of giants

What is standing on the shoulders of giants the present participle and gerund of?
Standing on the shoulders of giants is the present participle and gerund of stand on the shoulders of giants.

Words near standing on the shoulders of giants in the dictionary

  1. standing on one's head
  2. standing on one's own bottom
  3. standing on one's own two feet
  4. standing on someone's shoulders
  5. standing on the shoulders of
  6. standing on the shoulders of giants
  7. standing on velvet
  8. standing one's ground
  9. standing one's hand
  10. standing one's lick log
  11. standing order

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: standing on the shoulders of giants (page history and authors); 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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