Word.ws English Dictionary

held off

held off is the simple past and past participle of hold off.

Meaning of hold off

Verb

hold off (third-person singular simple present holds off, present participle holding off, simple past and past participle held off)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To delay (someone or something) temporarily; to keep at bay.
    • Let's try to hold off the lawyers until we are ready for them.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive, transitive) To delay commencing (an action until some specified time or event has passed).
    • Hold off (on) the decision one more day so I can answer your question.

Questions about held off

What is held off the simple past and past participle of?
Held off is the simple past and past participle of hold off.

Words near held off in the dictionary

  1. held in hand
  2. held it
  3. held it down
  4. held it in
  5. held it together
  6. held off
  7. held on
  8. held one's alcohol
  9. held one's breath
  10. held one's drink
  11. held one's fire

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: held off (page history and authors); hold off (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “held off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/held_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.