stand in the gate

• stand in the gates

stand in the gate (third-person singular simple present stands in the gate, present participle standing in the gate, simple past and past participle stood in the gate)

1. (idiomatic, dated) To occupy a place or position of advantage, power, or defence.
   • 1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC:

     "What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar can pluck me by the baird[2]—and a baird there is, and that's the worst of it yet!" she added partly to herself.

• “gate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.