stations

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of station.

   Commuters complained that several stations had closed for repairs.

   The expedition set up two research stations on the ice shelf.

   Note

   A regular plural, made by adding -s. It serves every sense of the singular: stopping places and depots, assigned posts, police and fire stations, and the American gas station. In compounds the -s goes on station itself, as in service stations and police stations. The same spelling also works as a verb. One Irish use, the home Mass gathering, exists only in the plural and has no singular behind it.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of station.

   The navy stations a patrol vessel at the harbor entrance year-round.

   Each shift, the manager stations an attendant by the main gate.

   Note

   The present-tense form for he, she, it or a singular noun subject. The verb is usually passive, as in soldiers are stationed abroad, so this active form is the less common shape. It always takes an object: someone stations a guard, a ship or an attendant. The military sense of posting troops to duty sits alongside the general one of putting someone in place for a task.

3. 3
   nounIrelandplural

   An occasional gathering of family and friends for religious devotion, held over a few days in a home, where Mass is celebrated and the Rosary said.

   Like a neighborhood potluck combined with a religious service, moving from one home to the next.

   The stations were held at the Murphy farmhouse, with neighbors gathering each evening for Mass and the Rosary.

   Hosting the stations meant weeks of cleaning and baking before the priest and relatives arrived.

   Note

   An Irish Catholic custom with its roots in the Penal Laws. At that time priests could not say Mass in public, so they celebrated it secretly in people's homes. The word is plural only: a family hosts the stations, never a station. It takes a plural verb, as in the stations were held. It is sometimes capitalized, as in the title of Bridget Haggerty's "The Stations".

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