stander-by

A stander-by may see more of the game than one that plays.

Clarissa Harlowe 2006

In my conscience, I think the common observation just; a stander-by sees more of the game, than he that plays.

Sir Charles Grandison 2006

Only, if I any where appear to you to be credulous, I beg you to set me right: for you are a stander-by, as you say in a former* — Would to Heaven I were not to play! for I think, after all, I am held to a desperate game.

Clarissa Harlowe 2006

He is merely an innocent stander-by in furry trousers.

Excerpt: Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants by Louise Rennison 2003

He committed the care of these forces to Hortensius, and himself spent the day in public as a stander-by and spectator of the gladiators, who exercised before him.

The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Plutarch 2003

He plays no part himself now, but is an onlooker, a stander-by, chronicling, as from a cloistered aloofness, yet I with kindly wisdom always, the little things that matter in the lives of those around him.

The Growth of the Soil 2003

His pocket is seldom without a Greek testament or Hebrew bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over.

Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters John Earle

The sexton turns the wheel about, and bids the stander-by

The Customs of Old England

Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by?

Graded Poetry: Seventh Year Various

Farther, Horace is not merely the stander-by contemplating the game in which objective mankind is engaged.

Horace and His Influence Grant Showerman