Word.ws English Dictionary

hold cheap

hold cheap verb: to have a low esteem for (someone or something); to hold in contempt; to look down upon.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To have a low esteem for (someone or something); to hold in contempt; to look down upon.
    • We shall not always plant while others reap / The golden increment of bursting fruit, / Not always countenance, abject and mute / That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; […]1927, Countee Cullen, “From the Dark Tower”, in Copper Sun, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, part 1 (Color); republished in James Weldon Johnson, editor, The Book of American Negro...

Forms of hold cheap

third-person singular presentholds cheap
present participleholding cheap
past participleheld cheap
pastheld cheap

Questions about hold cheap

What does hold cheap mean?
Hold cheap means to have a low esteem for (someone or something); to hold in contempt; to look down upon.
What part of speech is hold cheap?
Hold cheap is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold cheap?
The past tense of hold cheap is held cheap.

Words near hold cheap in the dictionary

  1. hold back
  2. hold back on
  3. hold baggage
  4. hold by
  5. hold by the button
  6. hold cheap
  7. hold come what may
  8. hold court
  9. hold dear
  10. hold down
  11. hold down the fort

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold cheap (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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