This article provides a diachronic constructional analysis of the three English cardinal posture verbs (hence CPVs) sit, stand and lie, based on two corpora covering the period of Early till Late Modern English . Contrary to their equivalents in typologically related languages, English CPVs have not grammaticalized into locative, progressive, or habitual markers nor have they grammaticalized into copulas. Based on a detailed diachronic analysis, the present paper argues that this is a story of "missed grammaticalization". Our corpus study has a double goal. First, it evaluates the degree of grammaticalisation in the earlier stages (as suggested by Lemmens 2014); secondly, it tries to find evidence for Newman's (2009) plausible hypothesis that the English CPVs did not further grammaticalise (or lost these uses) because of their increased use to refer to a dynamic event of getting into a sitting, standing or lying posture. This hypothesis seems to be mildly confirmed by our data with, however, some important nuances to be added, especially for lie. In addition, the data reveal that two (more strongly grammaticalised) copula constructions ([Subject + CPV + Adjective/Noun]) lingered on much longer, thereby constituting grammaticalised "islands", especially in idiomatic uses.