Bridge engineering

The fifth entry is standhalten, and its object is not in the case an English speaker expects. English withstands a flood the way it kicks a ball, with a plain direct object: « the pier withstood the flood ». German puts the force in the dative: Der Pfeiler hielt dem Hochwasser stand, never das Hochwasser. The verb is separable, so stand goes to the end of the clause, and the participle is standgehalten. The dative is not a quirk of this one verb. The verbs that set one force against another take it as a family: dem Druck widerstehen, dem Wetter trotzen, sich dem Plan widersetzen. The useful contrast is aushalten, which means much the same and takes the accusative: der Träger hält die Last aus. So the thing endured is an accusative, and the thing resisted is a dative, and a bridge report uses both in the same paragraph.