Word.ws English Dictionary

hold-up

US/ˈhoʊldˌʌp/

hold-up noun: a delay or wait.

Noun

hold-up (plural hold-ups)

  1. (colloquial) A delay or wait.
    • What is the hold-up?
    • The crossing caused serious congestion with long traffic hold-ups, and had been a bone of contention between the local authorities and the railway for over eighty years. It was controlled from Fletton Road Junction Signalbox (removed at the same time) and, until a wheel was installed in 1920...1959 April, C. R. Clinker and R. A. Dane, “The Railways of Peterborough”, in Railway Magazine, page 230
  2. (slang) A robbery at gunpoint.
    • This is a hold-up! Give us all your money.
    • They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God.1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168
  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: […]1974, Terence Reese, Master Play in Contract Bridge, page 75
    • In a holdup, a player delays taking a trick until opponents' entries are reduced.2014, Nicolae Sfetcu, The Bridge Game
  4. (in plural) Women's stockings designed to be worn without suspenders.
  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.1978, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Intelligence and Military Application of Nuclear Energy Subcommittee, Hearings on H.R. 11036 (H.R. 11686) (page 361)
    • During process operations and temporary shutdown, the holdup within the facility is also known as the in-process inventory.1989, Energy Research Abstracts, page 2046
  6. (Nigeria) A traffic jam.

hold-up meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

hold-up in Tamil

தாங்கு, தேக்கம், வழிப்பறிக் கொள்ளை

hold-up in Malayalam

setback, delay, hitch
താമസം, വിളംബം, തടസ്സം, പിന്നോട്ടടി, പിറകോട്ടടി, തിരിച്ചടി
(armed) robbery, (armed) raid, theft
കവർച്ചയ്ക്കായി നടത്തുന്ന ആക്രമണം, ഭയപ്പെടുത്തിയുള്ള കവർച്ച, കളവ്, കള്ളം, കൂട്ടായ്മക്കവർച്ച, കൂട്ടക്കവർച്ച

Examples of hold-up in a sentence

  • The crossing caused serious congestion with long traffic hold-ups, and had been a bone of contention between the local authorities and the railway for over eighty years.1959 April, C. R. Clinker and R. A. Dane, “The Railways of Peterborough”, in Railway Magazine, page 230:
  • Border hold-ups are counterproductive to winning hearts and minds, as were blundering Argentinian landings on the outer Falklands.2013 August 14, Simon Jenkins, “Gibraltar and the Falklands deny the logic of history”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 22...

Synonyms of hold-up

6 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of hold-up

pluralhold-ups

Origin of hold-up

A deverbal from hold up.

Words formed from hold-up

Phrases with hold-up

Questions about hold-up

What does hold-up mean?
Hold-up means a delay or wait.
What is hold-up in Tamil?
Hold-up in Tamil is தாங்கு, தேக்கம், வழிப்பறிக் கொள்ளை. See Hold-up meaning in Tamil.
How do you use hold-up in a sentence?
The crossing caused serious congestion with long traffic hold-ups, and had been a bone of contention between the local authorities and the railway for over eighty years.
What part of speech is hold-up?
Hold-up is a noun.
How do you pronounce hold-up?
Hold-up is pronounced /ˈhoʊldˌʌp/ (US).
What is the plural of hold-up?
The plural of hold-up is hold-ups.

Words near hold-up in the dictionary

  1. hold-all
  2. hold-alls
  3. hold-departure order
  4. hold-down
  5. hold-downs
  6. hold-up
  7. hold-up play
  8. hold-up plays
  9. hold-up squad
  10. hold-up squads
  11. hold-upper

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold-up (page history and authors); hold-up (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hold-up (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hold-up.wav.

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