Onhold

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To hold on (to). rare, transitive

    "She leaped and trembled; still onheld his gripe, And gnawed her waning life."

  2. 2
    To hold on. intransitive, rare

    "Resolved, That the Minutes of the Meeting of the Secondary Committee onheld 8 July, 1918, be and they are hereby confirmed."

Example

More examples

"She leaped and trembled; still onheld his gripe, And gnawed her waning life."

Etymology

From Middle English anhealden (“to retain”), from Old English onhealdan, anhealdan (“to hold, keep”), equivalent to on- + hold. Cognate with Saterland Frisian anhoolde (“to stop, persist”), West Frisian oanhâlde (“to apprehend, arrest, detain”), Dutch aanhouden (“to persist, continue, retain”) and onthouden (“to withhold, retain”), German anhalten (“to stop, last, persist”) and enthalten (“to contain, include”).

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