How to Use standing army in a Sentence

standing army

noun
  • There was no standing army, so Congress had to raise and fund one.
    — Noah Feldman, Twin Cities, 5 Mar. 2026
  • What most people forget is there is not a standing army to turn your airplane around.
    — Loren Grush, The Verge, 9 May 2018
  • China has the most manpower, with the largest standing army in the world.
    — New Atlas, 11 Dec. 2024
  • Our founding fathers feared the use of a standing army that could be used to further the aims of a dictator.
    — James Stavridis, Time, 3 June 2020
  • What’s more, Ukraine’s standing army is just a quarter of Russia’s, and its air force, less than a tenth.
    — Valerie Morkevicius, The Conversation, 5 Mar. 2022
  • Neutrophils and macrophages, Metchnikoff found, lived in tissues throughout the body—a standing army.
    — James Somers, The New Yorker, 2 Nov. 2020
  • There were concerns unique to the founding era, among them the libertarian dread of standing armies.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 8 Oct. 2017
  • Unlike large standing armies, drones that are being held in reserve do not take up a lot of space, do not need to be fed, and are not drawing salaries.
    — Lorenz Meier, TIME, 13 Aug. 2024
  • For many, having the largest population and standing army in the world are a source of everyday national pride.
    — NBC News, 11 May 2021
  • Many Americans feared and distrusted the idea of a standing army into the first half of the nineteenth century.
    — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 25 May 2026
  • The colonists were subject to arbitrary taxation, warrantless searches, standing armies in their homes, and other evils at the hands of the crown.
    — Agustina Vergara Cid, Oc Register, 15 Feb. 2026
  • The tax fights would intensify, and by the end of the year, Kosovo’s legislature had voted to create a standing army.
    — Seth Mandel, Washington Examiner, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Dahomey’s standing army was an anomaly in and of itself, as most other African kingdoms disbanded their forces when not actively at war.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Sep. 2022
  • The southeastern Choctaws alone possessed a military force ten times as large as the United States' standing army.
    — Caleb Pomeroy, Foreign Affairs, 24 Dec. 2025
  • How a country founded in fear of a standing army came to think of its military as a bulwark of American democracy is the subject of my work.
    — Kori Schake, The Atlantic, 22 Mar. 2026
  • The Polish government aspires to double the size of its standing army and has signed a flurry of contracts for military equipment.
    — Elisabeth Zerofsky, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Preventing the next pandemic depends on a standing army of health workers within communities.
    — Time, 10 June 2021
  • The Framers warned us about the dangers of a standing army in a democratic republic and its potential misuse in domestic affairs.
    — Angus King, Time, 7 Apr. 2026
  • The nation, famously, has no standing army, is seen as a regional peacemaker, an eco-tourism pioneer and a staunch advocate for human rights.
    — Jim Wyss, miamiherald, 30 Mar. 2018
  • The alliance has also been boosted by Finland, a new member as of last year and one with a large standing army, and by the likely accession of Sweden.
    — Adam Taylor, Washington Post, 13 Feb. 2024
  • South Korea has universal male conscription and a standing army of more than a half million people, an astounding one per cent of the population.
    — E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2023
  • At the time of the Homestead strike, Pinkerton’s active and reserve agents outnumbered the standing army of the United States.
    — Sarah Jones, The New Republic, 23 Mar. 2018
  • That equilibrium was unsettled by wars, producing standing armies that were funded by, and therefore loyal to, the generals rather than the Roman senate.
    — Daniel Foster, National Review, 30 Nov. 2023
  • The United States had a relatively small standing army at the start of the Civil War, one that was further divided, in two, by secession.
    — Matt Dellinger, The New Yorker, 16 May 2020
  • In fact, no subject worried America’s Founding Fathers more than the risk of a standing army threatening civilian governance.
    — Kori Schake, The Atlantic, 22 Mar. 2026
  • The founders fought bitterly over whether a standing army should exist at all, enacted civilian control over the military in the Constitution, and passed an amendment barring quartering of troops.
    — Jill Goldenziel, Forbes, 23 Dec. 2021
  • On the other hand, the Democratic-Republicans’ vision for the nation was based on the yeoman farmer with limited federal government and no standing army.
    — Lindsay M. Chervinsky / Made By History, TIME, 19 Sep. 2024
  • Yet Americans of that era had a deep and vocal dislike of standing armies, and Washington moved swiftly to demobilize the Continental Army once the war was over.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 11 Nov. 2019
  • The Founders of the United States, haunted by ancient Rome’s descent from republic to empire, resisted establishing a standing army.
    — Stephen Wertheim, The New Yorker, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Russia’s war on Ukraine has refocused attention on China and on ways Taiwan can resist a much larger and more powerful foe equipped with the world’s largest standing army and a huge arsenal of missiles.
    — Johnson Lai, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Oct. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'standing army.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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