Word.ws English Dictionary

held one's nerve

held one's nerve is the simple past and past participle of hold one's nerve.

Meaning of hold one's nerve

Verb

hold one's nerve (third-person singular simple present holds one's nerve, present participle holding one's nerve, simple past and past participle held one's nerve)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To stay calm facing nervousness.
    • She held her nerve after failing to serve out the match at the first attempt, seeing three match points slip by in a nervous service game at 6-4 5-4 and recovering from losing the tie-break to dominate the decider.2011 June 28, Piers Newbery, “Wimbledon 2011: Sabine Lisicki beats Marion Bartoli”, in BBC Sport

Questions about held one's nerve

What is held one's nerve the simple past and past participle of?
Held one's nerve is the simple past and past participle of hold one's nerve.

Words near held one's nerve in the dictionary

  1. held one's fire
  2. held one's head high
  3. held one's horses
  4. held one's jaw
  5. held one's liquor
  6. held one's nerve
  7. held one's nose
  8. held one's nose up
  9. held one's own
  10. held one's peace
  11. held one's pee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: held one's nerve (page history and authors); hold one's nerve (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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