Stance

How to spell stance

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stance

What does stance mean?

1. nounA stated attitude or position taken on a particular issue.
2. nounThe way a person positions and balances their feet and body, especially in sport.

Stance in a sentence

• The company softened its stance on remote working after the survey.

• The coach adjusted her stance before the next serve.

• Her firm stance against the merger surprised the board.

• A wide stance gives the lifter more stability under the bar.

Where does stance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Stance traces back to the Latin verb stare, which simply meant 'to stand'. From that came a Vulgar Latin form *stantia, describing a standing or a place where one stands, and this passed into Old French as estance and into Italian as stanza, a word that also gave us 'stanza' for a 'standing' block of verse. English picked up stance in the early 1500s, at first for the literal position in which a person plants their feet, as in archery, sport, or combat. Over time the meaning broadened from physical footing to the figurative footing a person takes on an issue, so today a stance can be a posture of the body or a position of the mind. The same stare root quietly underlies a crowd of familiar words such as 'stand', 'state', 'station', and 'stable', which is a useful reminder that the word is built on plain standing.

How the word is built

• stance (from Latin stare: to stand)
• the noun ending preserved from Old French estance