Word.ws English Dictionary

hold one's horses

Syllables: hold one's hors·es

hold one's horses verb: to be patient; to wait.

hold one's horses: to be patient; to wait
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To be patient; to wait.
    • "I'm going to tell you, ain't I?" he said, gruffly. "Just hold your horses a minute, please."1921, Booth Tarkington, chapter 24, in Alice Adams
    • "I would ask everybody to hold their horses until we go through the process," ElBaradei said.2007 September 17, “Force is last resort in Iranian crisis”, in forbes.com/Thomson Financial News, retrieved 05 Oct 2008
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hold, one's, horses.

Synonyms of hold one's horses

6 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of hold one's horses

Forms of hold one's horses

third-person singular presentholds one's horses
present participleholding one's horses
past participleheld one's horses
pastheld one's horses

Origin of hold one's horses

A play on different senses of the word stable in the sense of a place where horses are held, and also in the sense of being steady and unerratic.

Questions about hold one's horses

What does hold one's horses mean?
Hold one's horses means to be patient; to wait.
What part of speech is hold one's horses?
Hold one's horses is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold one's horses?
The past tense of hold one's horses is held one's horses.

Words near hold one's horses in the dictionary

  1. hold one's drink
  2. hold one's fire
  3. hold one's ground
  4. hold one's head above water
  5. hold one's head high
  6. hold one's horses
  7. hold one's jaw
  8. hold one's liquor
  9. hold one's mouth right
  10. hold one's nerve
  11. hold one's nose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold one's horses (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hold one's horses.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hold one's horses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hold_one%27s_horses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.