Stood down

oops, that's ...stand..., not ...sand...

"stand (somebody) down - if a soldier stands down or is stood down, he stops working for the day" - Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (BrE) - I'm sure I've heard the order "Stand the men down, Sergeant", on British TV .
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/stand_1

In this case, the New Zealand Navy Commander seems be having rather a long day off. This story is from an NZ news site, so maybe the extension to "suspended" is newspaper speak. But it's quite a logical one. (Just google the quote above)

It's in the OED, with citations from The Daily Telegraph and The Times (London).

I've wondered this myself and just thought of it as a euphemism. I hear it more from high schools, "the student has been stood down as a result of his behaviour". Some might have a problem with suspended sounding too harsh.

Hello hairyscot,

You said the following on another post:
"The use of phrases like "in America', or "in the US", or "according to Webster's" tends to destroy the credibility of any argument about spelling or grammar."

Aren't you using a phrase of this kind when you say, "In the antipodes"? Isn't this phrase, as you use it in your post, a way to sound authoritative without giving any actual support? This is what you were criticizing someone else for, and it seems you're doing the same thing here. Moreover, I'm curious to know the source of your information about the antipodes. What is it?

Hello acorn1.
Please see my response in the other thread.
As for the source of the phrase "stood down":
it appeared recently in a New Zealand newspaper and is in fact used frequently by the press and sports media in both NZ and Australia to indicate that someone has been suspended for some kind of indiscipline or misbehaviour.

"to be stood down"; is an "upsidedown" expression

The opposite of "to be stood up"??

Hello HairyScot.

You are wrong about the definition of "to be stood down." In Canada, as in the antipodes, the phrase is most commonly used to mean "to be in a southerly position relative to one's homeland." For a Canadian citizen, this may mean that the person is in the U.S.

The meaning in dispute ("to be suspended") is actually only the second most common usage. Be careful, though, not to split the infinitive: you may say, "to stand down somebody," but never "to stand somebody down."

I wanna know what means “have been stood down on a date”

An example from "Sharpe's Eagle", set during the Napoleonic Wars. After a disastrous skirmish with the French, the South Essex regiment chief, Colonel Sir Simmerson, tries to lay blame on a major who was killed and otherwise thoroughly discredit him. General Wellesley sees right through it and after tearing him a new one, announces "The South Essex is stood down in name. If I wipe the name, I may wipe the shame. I am making you a battalion of detachments; you will fetch and carry. The Light Company put up a fight, so I will let it stand under the command of a new captain."

This leads me to believe that when you are stood down, that is someone stands you down instead of standing down yourself, you are effectively being suspended from your current active role, and it carries a punitive connotation compared to asking someone to stand down, which is more neutral and is effectively a synonym for "calm down" or "stop what you're doing".

It's used in "Sharpe's Eagle". General Wessely tells Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson that "The South Essex [Regiment] is stood down in name. If I wipe the name I may wipe the shame." This is in response to a disastrous skirmish with a French patrol that led to the death of a respected major (captain in the book) and a rescue party being cut off, caused by Sir Henry's incompetence and cowardice (and then Sir Henry had the gall to lie to General Wessely's face about it, when his spy had already given him an accurate account). I think it means to be suspended or otherwise removed from official listings. I'm not certain, since despite saying he's making them a battalion of detachments, he lets the regiment's Light Company remain standing under the command of a new captain (Sharpe) and, as a kind of punishment, positions the regiment as the vanguard against a French column.