Other forms: stations
A station is the building where you wait for trains or buses. The railway station, at the station, a bus station.
It also names a place with a particular function: a police station, a fire station, a power station, a petrol station. In broadcasting a station is a channel: a radio station. As a verb, to station somebody somewhere is to post them there. Note stationary, meaning not moving, and stationery, meaning paper and pens — two spellings, two meanings, and one of the most-mixed-up pairs in English.
1nounstationA building where you wait for trains or buses.~36%
“The train leaves the station at half past eight.”
2nounplaceA place with a particular function.~64%
“The nearest petrol station is a mile down the road.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 22 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
station is a fixed place.
Latin statio means a standing place, from stare, to stand. Station, stationary and stationery all come from it — a stationer was a bookseller with a fixed stall rather than a travelling pedlar.
Proto-Indo-European
*steh₂-
Latin
statiōnem
Anglo-Norman
estation
Middle English
stacioun
English, today
station
Built from
From Middle English stacioun, borrowed from Anglo-Norman estation, from Latin statiōnem, accusative of statiō (“standing, post, job, position”), whence also Italian stazione. a doublet of stagione. Cognate with Ancient Greek ἵστημι, στάσις, Old English standan (whence English stand).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA