A stand is a human-made support fixture: a manufactured structure — typically a stable base, an upright post or arm, and a contact point (hook, cradle, clip, pad, or tray) — that holds an object upright or at a chosen position when the object is not in active use or cannot rest on the surface by itself. Parameters: (1) held-object class — the fixture is shaped to a specific object (headphone stand, music stand, lamp stand, tool stand); (2) base geometry — footprint and mass distribution sufficient to resist tipping under the held load; (3) arm/post geometry — height, reach, and adjustability (fixed, telescoping, articulated); (4) contact mechanism — hook, cradle, clip, clamp, or pad matched to the held object's form. Persistence mechanism: manufactured from wood, metal, or molded plastic; distributed through retail supply chains; replaced when the contact wears or the base fails; the form persists across cultures as the repeated mechanical solution to holding an object above a surface without fixing it to the surface or to the object itself. [formal: stans | substrate: matter | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
stand
A stand is a human-made support fixture: a manufactured structure — typically a stable base, an upright post or arm, and a contact point (hook, cradle, clip, pad, or tray) — that holds an object upright or at a chosen position when the obj…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made support fixture: a manufactured base-and-arm structure that holds an object (headphones, a lamp, sheet music, a tool) upright at a chosen position when it is not in active use — made-side because it is produced as a fixture and built to persist across repeated use of the held object.
Names and aliases
- standen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmsqh6629002cobvcrzywxv3sINSTANCE_OF →
A stand is a specific kind of furniture — a support structure for holding or displaying objects. Direction: stand→furniture. Nearest kind: furniture.
Relations to this entry
- music-stand← INSTANCE_OF
Specific→general (Law 9). Music-stand is a kind of stand: a support fixture with surface, post, and page-holder shaped to sheet music, satisfying all four stand parameters. Nearest kind.
- headphone-stand← INSTANCE_OF
Nearest-kind filing (Law 11e) that completes the ladder left open when headphone-stand→rack was struck. The rack target's accepted carve is the MECHANICAL GEAR (toothed bar meshing with a pinion) — a homograph trap, so the holding-structure sense needed its own entry, now filed: 'stand' = a support fixture of base, arm, and contact point holding an object upright at a chosen position. Source accepted carve: 'a human-made support fixture that holds a pair of headphones by the headband or earcups when not in use' with parameters (support geometry: base + upright arm or cradle; contact: cradle or hook) — that is a stand shaped to the held-object class 'headphones', satisfying the target's four parameters (held-object class, base geometry, arm geometry, contact mechanism) exactly. Specific→general (Law 9): a headphone stand is a stand whose held object is a pair of headphones.
Record identity
- Created
- Sep 12, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 439ef49a61ac7cf624e46804bd20f6ea4bcc392f6ff64fd4ca871c17b198fc39