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standoff

UK/ˈstændɒf/US/ˈstændɔf/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,627 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: standoffs

A standoff is a deadlock where neither side will give way. An armed standoff, a tense standoff, end the standoff.

The word is used of anything from a siege to a negotiation, and the defining feature is that both sides can wait. In sport it names a draw, and standoffish, from the same idea, means distant in manner.

Definitions of standoff

  1. 1nounstandoffA deadlock where neither side will give way.B2+

    “The standoff between the police and the armed man lasted all night.”

standoff is a deadlock.

Where it comes from

Deverbal from stand off.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

standoff in the wild

  • The Ruby Ridge standoff was the siege of the Weaver family home in Boundary County, Idaho, in August 1992.

    Ruby Ridge standoff

  • In the standoff, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Weaver, then shot Harris, but the second shot also hit and killed Weaver's wife Vicki blindly through a doorway.

    Ruby Ridge standoff

  • A Mexican standoff is a confrontation where no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory.

    Mexican standoff

  • The Mexican standoff as an armed stalemate is a recurring cinematic trope.

    Mexican standoff

  • The AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile is a low detection standoff air-launched cruise missile developed by Lockheed Martin for the United States Armed Forces.

    AGM-158 JASSM

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.