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Lex maniac

“Investigating changes in American English vocabulary over the last 50 years”

January 14, 2019 stand down

stand down

(1970’s | militarese | “cease hostilities,” “take a step back,” “give in”)

I concede, first off, that this nasal, phrasal verb may lie well outside my usual chronological constraints. It was current in British English during World War II, and probably before that, meaning “stop fighting.” I don’t think it had entered American military jargon that early, but I’m not sure; it certainly had by the time we were ensnared in Vietnam twenty-five years later. It’s still a common military term, but now it may be used elsewhere. A reporter might be told to stand down in the midst of pursuing an explosive story, or leaders of a political party might be urged to stand down from an unpopular position (a nicer way to say “back down”). Militarese, source of this conventional meaning of the phrase, has recently contributed another: an instructional period. Stand-downs are declared by the brass to impart information to large groups of soldiers about a pressing issue, such as safety, ethics, or health. For construction companies, a stand-down refers to a period of safety instruction in particular. In both cases, the grunts are concentrating on learning and not primarily concerned for the moment with their regular jobs. The expression indicates an organized, deliberate suspension of normal responsibilities. It might be occasioned by a recent mishap or simply be part of regularly scheduled uplift.

As noted, the expression is a Briticism and remains more common in the remains of Her Majesty’s dominions. It has other meanings in British English. One has to do with labor-management relations: “stand down” (transitive verb) means furlough or lay off temporarily; it is something an employer may do to an employee, not the other way around. More frequently, it means “resign,” or “step down,” as we would say in American English. These are both verbs, but “stand-down” has sprouted a hyphen and evolved into a noun — as illustrated in the previous paragraph — and may even take spot duty as an adjective. The nominal usage has not become current in the U.K., as far as I know.

“Stand down” is not the same as “retreat”; the order is issued from a position of strength, or at least parity. Anyway, that used to be true. I sense more and more that the expression may include backing down, or at least backing off, as part of its legitimate field. Whether you lay down your arms in triumph, disgrace, or somewhere in between, you might be said to stand down. We’ll wait and see if the implication of surrender becomes predominant in everyday language, so we gradually start hearing “stand down” as “capitulate” rather than “take a breather.”

There is a book, or many-splendored blog, to be written about the of oddities of English phrasal verbs. “Stand down” is not the opposite of “stand up,” while “stand back” lacks even a notional antithetical such as “stand front” or “stand forward.” (“Stand tall” likewise, though Abba’s lyric “The loser’s standing small” tried to supply one.) “Stand by” and “stand aside” give the same instruction but in opposite moods: the former encourages you to be helpful while the latter just wants you out of the way. “Stand over” has life as an idiom; “stand under” does not. Yet “understand” makes the cut while “overstand” is left out in the cold. Hard to tell where you stand.

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