Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
stand in the gate en · VERB
Meanings
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(dated, idiomatic) To occupy a place or position of advantage, power, or defence.
"What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird[2]—and a baird there is, and that's the worst of it yet!" she added partly to herself.
1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC:
Forms