Word.ws English Dictionary

hold one's liquor

hold one's liquor verb: to be resistant to intoxication or to show few signs of intoxication, even after consuming a significant amount of alcohol.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To be resistant to intoxication or to show few signs of intoxication, even after consuming a significant amount of alcohol.
    • Just because a person is descended from hard-drinking ancestors is no sign that he can "hold his liquor" better than others.1927, “Alcoholic Rats and Heredity”, in Popular Science, volume 110, number 6, page 39
    • Sandy Marsh didn't hold her liquor particularly well; she could get tipsy on two glasses of red wine.1987 September 14, Patricia Morrisroe, “The Life and Death of Sandy Marsh”, in New York Magazine, volume 20, number 36, page 49

Synonyms of hold one's liquor

Forms of hold one's liquor

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

Questions about hold one's liquor

What does hold one's liquor mean?
Hold one's liquor means to be resistant to intoxication or to show few signs of intoxication, even after consuming a significant amount of alcohol.
What part of speech is hold one's liquor?
Hold one's liquor is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold one's liquor?
The past tense of hold one's liquor is held one's liquor.

Words near hold one's liquor in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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

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