Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a threat, an act of intimidation; also attrib.

1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 176: If I’m a lawyer or a doctor and I take a couple of hundred off you for a court case that turns out a flop or an operation that kills you, what am I? A good citizen. [...] It’s all a standover.
1950		S.J. Baker in Sun. Herald (Sydney) 8 June 9/2: Most of these are small-time criminals. When they are pulled in by the police, often enough it is because they have [...] ‘tickled a peter’ or ‘worked a standover,’ all of which describe various forms of theft.
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 231: It was all a big standover. There were farmers being stood over by banks, butchers bullied by carcase butchers, bakers driven to suicide by flour millers; all one big bite.
1955		Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) 14 Apr. 17/5: [headline] Ian Accused of ‘Stand-Over’. [...] Ian Johnson has been wrongly accused of intimidation of Test umpires.
1984		B. Ellem Doing Time app. C 230: You get crammed in, pack rapes go on, there’s lots of fighting goes on, there’s lots of stand-overs going on.
1998		P. Doyle (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 43: A life of break-and-enters, bashings, shootings, ring-in rorts and standovers.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 176/2: standover n. an act of theft or extortion.
2007		L. Redhead Cherry Pie [ebook] ‘I was manager and had a bit of a reputation for standover and so forth’.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1938		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 26 Feb. 3/1: ‘No furder use for it [i.e. a pistol],’ he growled. The ‘stand-over’ racket is organised .
1947		Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) 20 Nov. 5/6: Serious charges of ‘stand-over’ methods by a person connected with the Government against himself were made.
1950		Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) 14 Sept. 7/3: Graziers alleged to-day that shearing contractors [...] were adopting ‘stand-over’ tactics to obtain more than the award rates.
1954		Sun. Mail (Adelaide) 25 Sept. 45/2: This guy Hassick [...] asked me for a ‘brick’ in a stand-over manner.
1991		M.B. ‘Chopper’ Read Chopper From The Inside 80: It worked out to about $3000 a week in slings, plus my regular standover money I’d pull off other crims.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 214: ‘For downright bully-boy stuff and pure standover shittiness - not to mention the abusive lingo - the Greencoat [etc].
2013		D. Whish-Wilson Zero at the Bone [ebook] ‘Photographing him about his business in James Street. Making his standover collections from all the shops, his trips to his boss Adamo’.

3. one who engages in intimidatory actions or words; also attrib.

1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 312: Curly’s profession of a ‘standover’ was no deterrent to her liking.
1941		Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 28 May 8/6: He is a ‘stand-over man,’ and an associate of criminals.
1951		(con. 1941) E. Lambert Twenty Thousand Thieves 73: He’s a snob and a crawler and a bloody little standover.
1959		D. Niland Gold in the Streets (1966) 208: I could smash you over the bloody head, you big standover mug. Bull artist.
2001		(con. 1945–6) P. Doyle Devil’s Jump (2008) 80: Wharfies, dockers, seamen, and assorted petty crims, prostitutes, standover thugs and lairs.
2006		B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] The authorities labelled the pair ‘stand-overs’ and shanghaied them to Grafton.
2016		D. Whish-Wilson Old Scores [ebook] Graham Farrell’s modus operandi [...] standing over standover merchants like Corvo.