Word.ws English Dictionary

stands for

stands for is the third-person singular simple present indicative of stand for.

Meaning of stand for

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To mean; to symbolize; to represent; especially of an acronym or abbreviation.
    • The abbreviation CIA stands for "Central Intelligence Agency".
  2. To advocate; to support.
    • Bernard, you should stand for Parliament.1986 February 13, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “A Victory for Democracy”, in Yes, Prime Minister, season 1, episode 6, spoken by Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne)
  3. To tolerate.
    • We won't stand for that type of behaviour.

Questions about stands for

What is stands for the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Stands for is the third-person singular simple present indicative of stand for.

Words near stands for in the dictionary

  1. stands corrected
  2. stands down
  3. stands fast
  4. stands fire
  5. stands firm
  6. stands for
  7. stands from under
  8. stands guard
  9. stands in
  10. stands in for
  11. stands in one's own light

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stands for (page history and authors); stand for (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: “stands for.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stands_for. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.