station
Pluralstations
Verbstations, stationing, stationed
Pluralstations
Formsstations, stationing, stationed
- 1A place where buses or trains regularly stop to pick up and drop off passengers, sometimes also serving as a base where vehicles are kept and sent out.
The new subway station opened to commuters this week.
Crowds gathered at the station as the last train departed.
UsageUsually named by type: train station, bus station. You wait at the station and go to the station.
- 2A facility for broadcasting radio or television, or the organization that produces and transmits such programs.
The station switched to a 24-hour news format last year.
Our local radio station plays old songs every Sunday morning.
UsageSay radio station or TV station for the broadcaster; for what you switch between on TV, channel is more usual.
Similarchannel, broadcaster, network, outlet
- 3An official building that serves as an operating base for police officers or firefighters.
The fire station downtown houses three engines and a ladder truck.
Officers returned to the station to file their reports.
UsageUsually named: police station, fire station. You report a crime at the police station.
- 4A designated spot where a particular item or service is made available.
Guests refilled their glasses at the drinks station.
Set up a station near the entrance where visitors can charge their phones.
UsageUsually named by what it offers: drinks station, charging station.
- 5A roadside business that sells gasoline and often provides vehicle services or convenience goods.
She pulled into the station and asked the attendant to check the oil.
Every station along the interstate was crowded during the holiday rush.
UsageShort for gas station or service station. Use the full term when the context is unclear.
Similargarage
Note
An American clipping: gas station or service station shortened to the bare noun. David M. Halbfinger's 2012 New York Times report has people waiting for gasoline 'at the few stations that had electricity.'
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- David M. Halbfinger wrote the cited New York Times report in 2012. en.wiktionary.org
- The report describes people waiting for gasoline using the exact quoted wording. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A permanent base where military personnel are posted and carry out their duties.
The remote station guarded the border for decades.
Soldiers at the station rotated home every six months.
Similarbase, post, garrison, outpost, installation
Note
Military English names its bases this way, as in a Royal Air Force station. Personnel at one are stationed there, so the noun and the verb travel together. A base can also outlive its purpose. Philip Haigh's 2023 RAIL article describes the former RAF station at Wildenrath, vacated after the Cold War and now used for test tracks for trains.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Philip Haigh's 2023 RAIL article describes railway testing at Wildenrath. en.wiktionary.org
- The former RAF airfield at Wildenrath closed after the Cold War. fv-verkehr.de
- Railway test tracks occupy the former RAF station site at Wildenrath. en.wikipedia.org
- 7To assign a person to a particular place in order to perform a task.
The director decided to station volunteers at each exhibit.
Officials stationed observers at every polling place.
UsageCommon patterns include stationed in Germany and stationed at the gate.
Similarpost, position, place, assign, deploy
Note
It extends readily to equipment deployed for a job. D. S. Barrie's Railway Magazine article of 1957 has about twenty locomotives 'usually stationed in the area.'
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- D. S. Barrie published the cited article in Railway Magazine in 1957. en.wiktionary.org
- The article describes about twenty locomotives and contains the exact words 'usually stationed in the area'. en.wiktionary.org
- 8A spot where a person stands or remains, or is assigned to stand or remain.
Each dancer held their station as the curtain rose.
The sentry never abandoned his station during the long night.
UsageUsually at your station or take your station; ships are on station.
Similarpost, position, place, spot
Note
Standing in its most literal form: the post a person or ship is told to hold. The phrase on station belongs here, as in 'All ships are on station, Admiral.' Post is its close partner, and Stevenson sends his men to take their post at a door. Michael Arlen's 'romantic station by night' shows the gentler side: simply a spot where one lingers. Putting someone there is the verb.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The illustrative sentence appears with this wording; no historical or fictional speaker is identified. en.wiktionary.org
- Stevenson's fiction contains an order to take a post at a door. Utterson gives the order to Bradshaw and a boy. gutenberg.org
- Michael Arlen uses the quoted phrase in Piracy; it is narration describing a place where a character pauses. gutenberg.org
Less common meanings
- 9One's social rank, standing, or position in life.
He never forgot the humble station into which he was born.
Their growing wealth raised the family to a higher station.
UsageCommon in above your station or beyond your station, which usually sounds disapproving.
Similarrank, status, position, standing, class
Note
Rank pictured as a place one has been assigned, which is why the word so often carries a reproach: ambitions beyond her station. It pairs naturally with rank, as in Hamlet's 'of the best rank and station.' Milton's angels who 'have kept … their station' show how close it stays to the idea of holding one's post.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The quotation 'of the best rank and station' occurs in Hamlet, spoken by Polonius in Act I, scene iii. gutenberg.org
- Milton describes the loyal angels as having kept their station in Paradise Lost, Book VII; the Father speaks the quoted words. gutenberg.org
- 10A device that communicates over a network, such as a computer acting as a host.
Every station on the local network was assigned a unique IP address.
Network administrators monitor traffic from thousands of connected stations.
Note
Networking calls each attached machine a station, and early home-computer networks numbered them. On a ZX Spectrum fitted with Interface 1, a LOAD or SAVE sent over the network or to a Microdrive had to name the station or drive at the other end. Host is the general synonym, but station keeps the older idea of a fixed point on the network.
- 11A very large farm, especially in Australia or New Zealand, for raising sheep or cattle.
Her grandparents owned a remote station that grazed thousands of merino sheep.
The pilot flew supplies out to isolated cattle stations across the territory.
UsageUsually sheep station or cattle station.
Note
Australian and New Zealand English for a pastoral holding on a scale that makes farm sound small. These are vast holdings, sometimes thousands of square kilometers, run from a remote homestead. A. B. Paterson's The Man From Snowy River (1890) opens on one: 'There was movement at the station.'
- 12Any of the fourteen images depicting successive stages of Jesus's final journey to his crucifixion, used as a focus for meditative prayer.
Worshippers paused at every station, recalling a moment from Christ's path to the cross.
The parish commissioned fourteen carved stations for the walls of the nave.
UsageThe full set is the Stations of the Cross, with capitals; people pray at each station.
Note
The singular of a devotional set: one image, and one pause in prayer, within the Stations of the Cross, whose full name takes capitals. Worshippers move from station to station, which ties it to the halting church of a procession. In both, the word marks where a moving act of prayer stops.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- An individual station belongs to a devotional sequence represented through sacred art, prayer and reflection. usccb.org
- The devotion involves movement between stations. usccb.org
- The church sense likewise denotes a stopping place for a procession and prayer. en.wiktionary.org
- 13The post, office, or sphere of duty that a person is appointed to fill; one's assigned employment or occupation.
Appointed to a station of great responsibility, he served the crown faithfully.
She filled her station as governess with quiet diligence.
Similarpost, position, office, appointment, role
Note
Duty rather than rank: the post a person has been given and is expected to fill well. Robert Nelson's Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1704) speaks of doing God's will 'in our several stations.' The phrase carries the moral idea that each person has an appointed sphere. The meaning sits close to social rank, and the two easily blur.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Robert Nelson wrote A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, first published in 1704. grubstreetproject.net
- The work speaks of performing God's will using the exact phrase 'in our several stations.' en.wiktionary.org
- 14Any of a series of equally spaced points marked along a path or survey line.
The crew set a stake at each station, spaced one hundred feet apart.
Elevation readings were taken at all stations along the proposed route.
Note
Surveyors set stations at measured intervals along a route or traverse. Each one marks a fixed position along the line, where distance and often elevation are recorded. Equal spacing is typical: a single mark is a point, and a station is usually one point in an evenly divided line.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Surveyors mark stations at measured intervals along routes. archive.nptel.ac.in
- Route stations mark positions along an alignment. Elevations may be determined at those positions using an instrument set up elsewhere; every station need not be an instrument or elevation reference point. archive.nptel.ac.in
- Regular spacing is common, but intermediate stations also identify positions between full stations. Equal spacing does not define every survey station. help.fieldsystems.trimble.com
- 15In British India, a settlement where a district's English officials lived, or where garrison officers stationed outside a fortress were quartered.
On cool evenings, the families of the station gathered for tennis and tea.
When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways.
1889, Rudyard Kipling, “A Wayside Comedy”Note
A word of British India, now met only in history. Kipling's Under the Deodars (1889) capitalizes it: a man 'absolutely alone in a Station' risks 'falling into evil ways.' That makes the small official enclave sound like a world of its own. A physician's address in the Transactions of the International Congress of Medicine recalls Bellary as one of the most unhealthy stations in India.
- 16The condition of being at rest and not moving; stasis.
Note
The most literal meaning, now gone from use: simply not moving. Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) sets it against motion, with legs paired so that 'two are always in motion and two in station.' It survives in the astronomer's term for a planet's apparent halt.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Station has a historical meaning of motionlessness or stasis. en.wiktionary.org
- Thomas Browne wrote Pseudodoxia Epidemica. preview.wellcomecollection.org
- Pseudodoxia Epidemica was first published in 1646. en.wikipedia.org
- Browne contrasts motion with station when describing paired movements of quadrupeds' legs, using the quoted wording. penelope.uchicago.edu
- The astronomical term describes a planet's apparent halt. eco2.mtk.nao.ac.jp
- 17A habitat; the specific spot or type of environment where a species is found in the wild.
- 18The position of the baby's head during labor, measured in centimeters above or below the bony points of the mother's pelvis.
- 19The apparent standstill of a planet in the sky just before it begins or ends its backward, retrograde motion.
- 20In Roman Catholic practice, a fast observed on Wednesdays and Fridays in memory of the council that condemned Christ and of his passion.
- 21A church at which the procession of the clergy halts on appointed days to recite appointed prayers.
- 22A cove or harbor whose shoreline can accommodate a base supporting fishing in nearby waters.
- 23A widened area in a mine shaft or gallery, serving as a landing, a passing place, or a spot to house a pump, tank, or similar equipment.
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Practice
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Origin
Latin statiō ("standing, post, job, position") passed into Anglo-Norman as estation, and Middle English borrowed that as stacioun. Related words include Ancient Greek στάσις (stásis) and Old English standan, from which English stand comes.