standing army

1. 1.

   a permanent army of paid soldiers

   Broaderarmy

   military

Questions about standing army

What does standing army mean?

standing army means "a permanent army of paid soldiers".

Is standing army a common word?

standing army is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.