A verb that holds still and does many other jobs
In modern English, to stand is first of all to be upright on the feet. The same verb also means to remain in place, to stay valid, to tolerate something unpleasant, to cost a certain amount, and, in British usage, to offer oneself as a candidate. As a noun it names a place or posture, a stall, a rack of furniture, spectator seating, a growth of trees, a halt in a fight, and a stop on a tour. Those uses look scattered until the history is laid out: almost all of them grew from occupying a spot and not leaving it.
The origin of the word stand is native, not a later import. English inherited it from Old English rather than borrowing it from French or Latin, even though those languages carry related verbs of their own.
From Old English into the modern spellings
Old English had standan, also written stondan. It was a class VI strong verb: the past was stod and the past participle standen. Already then the verb covered more than posture. Speakers used it for occupying a place, staying or continuing, remaining valid, taking place, resisting an attack, and amounting to a given quantity. Being on one’s feet sat beside senses of duration and firmness.
Middle English kept both vowels in the infinitive, writing stonden and standen. The modern spelling settled on stand; the past became stood, from the old stod. The participle later followed the past, so that we now say stood rather than the older standen. None of this path is a loan. The Oxford English Dictionary treats the verb as inherited from Germanic and dates its first English use to the Old English period, before 1150. The noun is recorded in the same period.
The Germanic verb and the n in the middle
Behind Old English standan sits Proto-West Germanic standan and, further back, Proto-Germanic standaną, reconstructed with the same core meaning: to stand. Close kin include Old Norse standa, Old Saxon standan, Old Frisian stonda, Gothic standan, and Old High German stantan. Those forms keep the consonant cluster English still has.
Germanic also had a shorter sister verb, reconstructed as stāną, without the extra nasal in the present stem. That line yields Dutch staan, German stehen, and Scandinavian stå. The German vowel is sometimes explained as a later adjustment toward gehen, to go; that account is a possibility, not a settled fact. English kept the longer present, which is why the modern infinitive still shows n.
That n is morphology, not decoration. Comparative work reconstructs a present stem built with an infixed nasal, a Pre-Germanic shape along the lines of sth₂-n-t-. The past comes from an extended form of the same root without that infix, which is why English has stand beside stood. How the extra consonant in the extended past arose in Pre-Germanic is not known; etymological handbooks mark the process as unclear rather than inventing a tidy story.
The Indo-European root
The deeper source is the Proto-Indo-European root usually cited as steh₂- (older handbooks often write sta- or stā-). Its basic sense is to stand, to set down, to be or make firm, with derivatives that name a place or a thing that stands. English did not take the everyday verb from Latin or Greek; it inherited a Germanic development of that root. The Latin and Greek verbs are cousins, not parents.
Latin stare, to stand, and sistere, to make stand or stop, sit behind English words that only look unrelated at first glance: state, status, station, statue, stance, consist, persist, resist, and cost, from a Latin verb that literally meant to stand at a price. Greek histēmi, to set or cause to stand, and stasis, a standing still, belong to the same family. Sanskrit has a matching verb of standing; Persian -stan in country names is historically a place where one stands. Those parallels confirm the root. They are not the route the English verb travelled.
How the senses spread
By about 1300 the verb is attested for existing or being present. In the mid-fourteenth century it could mean to cost. From the 1550s it could mean to put oneself forward for office. Late in the sixteenth century it took on meeting something without retreat; around 1600 it meant to come through an ordeal; by the 1620s a weaker reading, to put up with, is in evidence. Nautical English of that century used it for holding a course at sea. Paying for a treat is recorded from 1821. Measuring height while upright appears from 1831.
Phrases grew out of the same stock. To let something stand is already Middle English, around 1200. Stand back is late fourteenth century. Stand to reason, early seventeenth century, rests on an older wording in which a claim stands with reason, that is, holds to it. Stand one’s ground is from the 1620s. Stand down began in court, of a witness leaving the box in the 1680s, and only much later, by 1916, meant coming off military duty. Stand pat is a later nineteenth-century poker term: keep the hand as dealt.
The noun has a double ancestry that sources do not fully separate. Some senses continue Old English stand, a pause, delay, or stretch of inaction. Others look drawn off the verb. By about 1300 it meant a place of standing. Late in the fourteenth century it named the act of coming to a halt, especially in fighting, and by the 1590s a holding of ground against an opponent. A raised platform for a hunter is attested around 1400; seating for spectators from the 1610s; a stall or booth from about 1500; furniture on which something rests from the 1690s. Military English of 1721 used stand for a complete set of arms or colours. American English by 1868 applied it to a standing growth of trees. Theatrical usage around 1895 made a stand a stop on a tour. Dutch and German have a matching noun stand, a Germanic habit rather than an English one-off.
What the past tense still shows
The most compact remnant of the older grammar is the pair stand and stood. The n belongs to the present; the past never carried it. That split is older than English and still visible every time the verb is conjugated. The same root, travelling other routes, gave Latin-derived English its words for status and station, and gave Persian its -stan. The everyday verb itself is the Old English one, still doing the work of staying put.