Word.ws English Dictionary

standing pat

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

Meaning of stand pat

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To play one's hand without drawing any more cards.
    • With a mixed hand and the highest card the curse of Scotland, I've seen that man stand pat in a game with four millionaire mining men.1920, Peter B. Kyne, chapter IV, in The Understanding Heart
  2. (intransitive) To stop hitting; to declare one's hand as final.
    • After getting a hand of 20, the player stood pat.
    Synonyms:
    stand, stick
  3. (idiomatic) To resist changes.
    • China has cut rates and allowed banks to boost lending, while some countries, such as South Korea have stood pat, fearful that inflation pressures could reignite.2012, "Asia's Local Growth Dilemma", Wall Street Journal, by Alex Frangos, 21st of July

Questions about standing pat

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

Words near standing pat in the dictionary

  1. standing ovations
  2. standing over
  3. standing pad
  4. standing part
  5. standing parts
  6. standing pat
  7. standing rib
  8. standing ribs
  9. standing rigging
  10. standing riggings
  11. standing room

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: standing pat (page history and authors); stand pat (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 pat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/standing_pat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.