Hold-up

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A delay or wait. colloquial

    "What is the hold-up?"

  2. 2
    A robbery at gunpoint. slang

    "This is a hold-up! Give us all your money."

  3. 3
    The holding back of a card that could win a trick in order to use it later.

    "This was another hand on which a holdup caused declarer to lose control and to go down in a sensational way: […]"

  4. 4
    Women's stockings designed to be worn without suspenders. in-plural
  5. 5
    The inventory of nuclear material within a separation plant.

    "And to the left is a portable gamma counter that tells us the holdup of plutonium recovery facilities."

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  1. 6
    A traffic jam. Nigeria

Synonyms

All synonyms
armed robberyassaultcunctationdefermentdelaydetain

Example

More examples

"Mary had a moral dilemma: should she tell the police that the man in the CCTV footage of the hold-up, looked like Tom?"

Etymology

A deverbal from hold up.

Related phrases

hold-up squadhold-upper

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.