at a stand

Now I am quite at a stand.

Some how or other my eye encountered with Miss Maria’s at the end of this speech; she seemed conscious, and on my observing that Mr. Wellworth was an excellent young man, she reddened excessively, and seemed at a stand for words.

1847, Joel Palmer, Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains to the Mouth of the Columbia River, entry for 12 October, 1845, Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.), Early Western Travels Volume 30, Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark, 1906, p. 139, I began for the first time to falter, and was at a stand to know what course to pursue.

1956, J. I. M. Stewart (as Michael Innes), A Question of Queens (alternative title Old Hall, New Hall), New York: Dodd, Mead, Chapter 16, p. 162, He asked me, had I heard any untoward news abroad? I replied instantly that I had not. Nothing of foreigners come into the neighbourhood? This put me rather at a stand.

1717, John Dryden (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books, London: Jacob Tonson, Book 15, “The Pythagorean Philosophy,” p. 521, Thus are their Figures never at a stand, But chang’d by Nature’s innovating Hand; All Things are alter’d, nothing is destroy’d, The shifted Scene for some new Show employ’d.