What is the origin of スタンド meaning "desk lamp"? I'm struggling to turn up any answers on why the word is used to mean "desk lamp". My guess would be that it's a case of metonymy, but I don't know.

It's short for , which we can see in sense ② in Daijirin:

> ②

Here, means "abbreviation". And of course, {} means both "electricity" and "[electric] light". Why does have this meaning? Well, most dictionaries don't say, and I suppose _this_ could be simple metonymy, but when we look up in , we find:

> ③⇨{}

So we could consider as indirectly short for {} "electric" {} "light" "stand".