Origins
The verb 'stand' traces an unbroken line of descent through over five thousand years of linguistic history, from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- through Proto-Germanic *standaną and Old English 'standan' to the modern form. The PIE root *steh₂-, meaning 'to stand' or 'to set in place,' is one of the most prolific and well-attested roots in comparative linguistics, having produced hundreds of derivatives across virtually every branch of the Indo-European family.
In the Germanic languages, the root took the form *standaną with a nasal infix (an -n- inserted into the root), a common Indo-European verb-forming strategy. This produced Old English 'standan,' Old Norse 'standa,' Old High German 'stantan' (modern German 'stehen'), Gothic 'standan,' and Dutch 'staan.' The nasal infix indicates that the Germanic verb was formed as a present-tense stem — the -nd- cluster that makes 'stand' distinctive is itself a morphological fossil from PIE verb formation.
Outside Germanic, the root's descendants are staggering in number and range. Latin 'stāre' (to stand) generated an enormous Latin and Romance vocabulary that flooded into English through French: state, station, status, statue, stage, stance, stanza (originally a 'stopping place' in a poem), substance (what 'stands under'), substitute (one who 'stands in for' another), constitute, institute, prostitute (one who 'stands before' or 'stands forth publicly'), superstition (what 'stands over' one), circumstance (what 'stands around'), distance (what 'stands apart'), instant (what 'stands upon' or 'presses'), and constant (what 'stands together' or 'stands firm').
Greek Origins
Greek 'histanai' (to set up, to cause to stand) produced 'stasis' (a standing still), 'system' (what is 'set up together'), 'ecstasy' (standing outside oneself), 'apostasy' (standing away from), 'hypostasis' (standing under), and the suffix '-stat' used in 'thermostat,' 'rheostat,' and similar terms. Sanskrit 'tiṣṭhati' (stands), Persian 'istādan' (to stand), and Old Irish 'tair' (come, stand) all trace to the same root.
The compound 'understand' has a famously debated etymology. The Old English form was 'understandan,' and while the literal components suggest 'to stand under,' the prefix 'under-' in Old English could also mean 'between' or 'among.' The most widely accepted theory is that 'understand' originally meant 'to stand among' or 'to stand close to' — to be present with something and therefore to comprehend it. A similar metaphor exists in Latin 'comprehendere' (to seize, to grasp) and Greek 'epistasthai' (to understand, literally 'to stand upon').
'Withstand' is more transparent: Old English 'wiþstandan' meant literally 'to stand against,' and this meaning has remained essentially unchanged for over a thousand years. 'Standard' (originally a rallying flag or pole that stands upright in battle) entered English from Old French 'estandard,' itself from Frankish *standhard ('stand firm').
Old English Period
The past tense 'stood' (from Old English 'stōd') preserves the ancient ablaut pattern of the strong verb — the internal vowel change that distinguishes present from past. This same pattern appears in related verbs across Germanic: German 'stehen/stand,' Dutch 'staan/stond.' The consistency of this pattern across the family confirms the great antiquity of the verb.
Semantically, 'stand' has extended far beyond physical uprightness. It means to endure ('I can't stand it'), to remain valid ('the ruling stands'), to run for office in British English ('to stand for Parliament'), and to represent ('USA stands for United States of America'). These metaphorical extensions all flow from the core concept of maintaining a position — physical, legal, political, or symbolic. The word's history is, in a sense, the history of Indo-European civilization's metaphorical relationship with the upright human body.