1. Commonly used or supplied
2. Conforming to or constituting a standard of measurement or value; or of the usual or regularized or accepted kind
3. Established or widely recognized as a model of authority or excellence
4. Regularly and widely used or sold; SYN. stock.
5. (Linguistics) Conforming to the established language usage of educated native speakers; (American); (British); SYN. received.

Village in Illinois (USA), population 260.

1. A de jure technical guideline advocated by a recognized noncommercial or government organization that is used to establish uniformity in an area of hardware or software development. The standard is the result of a formal process, based on specifications drafted by a cooperative group or committee after an intensive study of existing methods, approaches, and technological trends and developments. The proposed standard is later ratified or approved by a recognized organization and adopted over time by consensus as products based on the standard become increasingly prevalent in the market. Standards of this type are numerous, including the ASCII character set, the RS-232-C standard, the SCSI interface, and ANSI-standard programming languages, such as C and FORTRAN. See also ANSI, convention, RS-232-C standard, SCSI.
2. A de facto technical guideline for hardware or software development that occurs when a product or philosophy is developed by a single company and, through success and imitation, becomes so widely used that deviation from the norm causes compatibility problems or limits marketability. This type of highly informal standard setting is exemplified by Hayes-compatible modems and IBM PC–compatible computers. See also compatibility (definition 3).

ETYM Old Fren. estendart, French étendard, probably from Latin extendere to spread out, extend, but influenced by Eng. stand. Related to Extend.
1. A basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated; SYN. criterion, measure, touchstone.
2. The value behind the money in a monetary system; SYN. monetary standard.
3. An upright pole (especially one used as a support).
4. Any distinctive flag.
5. A board measure equalling 1980 board feet.