query

[saintpeter48]

why do people sit in the stands but stand on the terraces!

[loonytunes]

Don't know, but probably the same reason why a thing carried by ship is called cargo, but things delivered by a vehicle are called a shipment.

[Quizmonster]

'Stand' did not always mean a place to sit. For half a millennium, a soldier's 'stand' was the place he 'stood' to carry out sentry-duty and a huntsman's 'stand' was where he 'stood' ready to shoot game. In other words, it was simply a 'watching-place'.
The earliest recorded use of the word - in the 1600s - in a purely sporting sense was where spectators 'stood' to watch Doncaster races. Sitting in 'stands' is relatively recent.