How to Use standing army in a Sentence
standing army
noun
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The country did not maintain a large standing army, and as late as the 1870s, the U.S. Navy was smaller than the navy of Chile.
—
Joseph S. Nye Jr.,
Foreign Affairs,
12 Dec. 2016
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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
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North Korea also has the world's largest standing army.
—
Deb Riechmann,
chicagotribune.com,
15 Sep. 2017
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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
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What most people forget is there is not a standing army to turn your airplane around.
—
Loren Grush,
The Verge,
9 May 2018
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Neutrophils and macrophages, Metchnikoff found, lived in tissues throughout the body—a standing army.
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James Somers,
The New Yorker,
2 Nov. 2020
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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
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There were concerns unique to the founding era, among them the libertarian dread of standing armies.
—
Kevin D. Williamson,
National Review,
8 Oct. 2017
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For many, having the largest population and standing army in the world are a source of everyday national pride.
—
NBC News,
11 May 2021
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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
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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
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Without marching orders, the standing army remained on call.
—
Dhruv Khullar,
The New Yorker,
11 Aug. 2021
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Zelensky is concerned about the government’s ability to pay for a larger standing army (frontline pay is six times the average Ukrainian wage at $3000 per month) and about the political risk.
—
Frederik Pleitgen,
CNN,
10 Feb. 2024
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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
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That restriction reflected the Framers’ fear of standing armies as a threat to liberty, a concern that was itself rooted in their English forefathers’ experiences during the Cromwellian era.
—
Matt Ford,
The New Republic,
20 July 2023
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In the summer of 1914, with nationalist agitation at its height, all the major European powers were armed and bristling, with millions of men in standing armies and dreadnoughts and howitzers galore, all ready to be mobilized within weeks.
—
Zachary Karabell,
WSJ,
30 Nov. 2018
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Preventing the next pandemic depends on a standing army of health workers within communities.
—
Time,
10 June 2021
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Advertisement North Korea, in addition to its nuclear weapons program, fields one of the world’s largest standing armies, with 1.3 million active duty soldiers and 7.6 million reservists.
—
Max Kim,
Los Angeles Times,
27 Nov. 2023
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Building a standing army of three hundred thousand in a country that has been shattered by more than forty consecutive years of war and whose economy is almost entirely dependent on external aid—that just doesn’t work.
—
Isaac Chotiner,
The New Yorker,
15 Aug. 2021
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As a republican, Madison believed that a standing army or navy would become tools to facilitate the end of democratic government and its replacement by empire, as had happened in ancient Rome.
—
Noah Feldman,
Anchorage Daily News,
7 Mar. 2018
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In exercising the dispensing power, maintaining a standing army, dissolving Parliaments, and any of the other acts to which Parliament objected, James was simply ruling within the bounds and precedents of the crown.
—
Declan Leary,
National Review,
19 July 2019
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The standing army of lawyers, accountants, and other providers dedicated to manning the ramparts against any audits, any inquiries, or any efforts at upholding a democratic taxation system.
—
Casey Michel,
The New Republic,
4 Nov. 2021
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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