Definition of "station"

A stopping place.

1. A regular stopping place for ground transportation.  examples

2. A ground transportation depot.  examples

3. A place where one stands or stays or is assigned to stand or stay.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • " […] Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutes, to get to your stations."

     1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

   • He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Picadilly, and there stayed for a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps.

     1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days

4. A place where some object is provided.  examples

5. (US) A gas station, service station.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Localities across New Jersey imposed curfews to prevent looting. In Monmouth, Ocean and other counties, people waited for hours for gasoline at the few stations that had electricity. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare.

     2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, New York Times, retrieved 31 October 2012

A place where workers are stationed.

1. An official building from which police or firefighters operate.  examples

2. A place where one performs a task or where one is on call to perform a task.  examples

3. A military base.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • The dynamic tests at Wildenrath use continuous test tracks built on the site of a former Royal Air Force station that was vacated after the end of the Cold War.

     2023 November 29, Philip Haigh, “New Piccadilly Line trains put to the test”, in RAIL, number 997, page 26

4. A place used for broadcasting radio or television; the broadcasting entity itself.  examples

5. (Australia, New Zealand) A very large sheep or cattle farm.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around, / that the colt from old Regret had got away,

     1890, A. B. Paterson, The Man From Snowy River

   • Tiring of sheep, he took work on cattle stations, mustering cattle on vast unfenced holdings, and looking for work ‘nigger-bossing’, or supervising Aboriginal station hands.

     1993, Kay Walsh, Joy W. Hooton, Dowker, L. O., entry in Australian Autobiographical Narratives: 1850-1900, page 69

   • The romance of the gritty station owner in a crumpled Akubra, his kids educated from the remote homestead by the School of the Air, while triple-trailer road trains drag tornadoes of dust across the plains, creates a stirring idea of the modern-day pioneer battling against the elemental Outback.

     2003, Margo Daly, Anne Dehne, Rough Guide to Australia, page 654

6. (historical) In British India, the place where the English officials of a district, or the officers of a garrison (not in a fortress) reside.  quotations

   Quotations

   • It was my fate to commence my career in the medical service forty years ago in the presanitary days, long before the introduction of modern methods of diagnosis, at two of the most unhealthy stations in the whole of India — Bellary and Secunderabad.

     1881, International Congress of Medicine, Transactions of the 1st, 2nd, 4th-17th Congress, page 541

(Christianity) Any of the Stations of the Cross.  examples

(Christianity) The Roman Catholic fast of the fourth and sixth days of the week, Wednesday and Friday, in memory of the council which condemned Christ, and of his passion.  examples

(Christianity) A church in which the procession of the clergy halts on stated days to say stated prayers.  quotations  examples

Standing; rank; position.  quotations  examples

(Newfoundland) A harbour or cove with a foreshore suitable for a facility to support nearby fishing.  examples

(surveying) Any of a sequence of equally spaced points along a path.  examples

The particular place, or kind of situation, in which a species naturally occurs; a habitat.  examples

(mining) An enlargement in a shaft or galley, used as a landing, or passing place, or for the accommodation of a pump, tank, etc.  examples

Post assigned; office; the part or department of public duty which a person is appointed to perform; sphere of duty or occupation; employment.  quotations  examples

(medicine) The position of the foetal head in relation to the distance from the ischial spines, measured in centimetres.  examples

(obsolete) The fact of standing still; motionlessness, stasis.  quotations

(astronomy) The apparent standing still of a superior planet just before it begins or ends its retrograde motion.  examples

(usually passive) To put in place to perform a task.  quotations  examples

To put in place to perform military duty.  examples