/ˈstænd ˈsʌmwʌn ˈʌp/
English idiom, informal. To not turn up for a date or meeting without telling the other person.
Draft Not yet checked by a native English speaker.
How do people use Stand someone up
?
Mostly about dates, sometimes about friends or appointments. The person goes in the middle (“she stood me up”, “he stood Laura up”), and the past is “stood”. The passive is common too: “I got stood up”.
Stand someone up
in real sentences
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I can’t believe you stood me up.
Tatoeba, sentence by CM, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Jim’s angry because his date for the movie stood him up and he wasted an hour waiting for her in the rain.
Tatoeba, sentence by CP, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Stand someone up
come from?
English Wiktionary traces the phrasal verb “stand up” back to Middle English “standen up” and Old English “standan up”, citing the Oxford English Dictionary, but that history covers the plain sense of getting to your feet. It lists “stand someone up” as a separate idiomatic sense with no date or explanation.
Mistakes learners make with Stand someone up
Mixing it up with “stand up for someone” (defend them) and “stand up to someone” (resist them). Also, a pronoun has to sit in the middle, so “she stood up me” is wrong.
Other English idioms like Stand someone up
Spot a mistake in Stand someone up
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.