the.com/standoff
Two people too proud to lose and too scared to move first.
means A deadlock in which opposing sides hold their positions and neither will back down or make the first move.
from A plain English compound — 'stand' plus 'off,' meaning to stand apart or keep one's distance. 'Stand off' worked as a verb (to hold aloof, to keep away) long before it hardened into the single noun 'standoff,' which carries the sense of two forces standing apart, locked and unmoving. 'Stand' descends from Old English 'standan,' a deep Germanic root for staying upright and unmoved; 'off' is simply 'of,' an old marker of separation. The word's flavor of a tense, frozen confrontation is largely an American development.
- longest siege
- Candia held off the Ottomans for 21 years
- game theory
- Mutual deterrence kept Cold War nukes unfired
- word origin
- Literally to stand at a distance, off
- physics version
- Equal forces canceling out leaves stillness
- poker term
- A split pot when hands tie exactly
cuban missile crisis — us and soviet union faced off over nuclear missiles in cuba, october 1962
korean demilitarized zone — north and south korea separated by 2.5-mile buffer since 1953 armistice
waco siege — 51-day fbi standoff with branch davidians in texas, ended april 1993