Word.ws English Dictionary

hold sway

hold sway verb: to have the greatest influence (over someone or something); to be pre-eminent; to dominate.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To have the greatest influence (over someone or something); to be pre-eminent; to dominate.
    • Within Lololand, of course, no Chinese writ runs, no Chinese magistrate holds sway, and the people, more or less divided among themselves, are under the government of their tribal chiefs.1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China
    • Not only is Jon’s claim to the Iron Throne stronger than hers, thanks to a patriarchal society, but her heroic deeds—and the attendant risks—hold no sway in the North.2019 May 5, Danette Chavez, “Campaigns are Waged On and Off the Game Of Thrones Battlefield (Newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 28 Jan 2021

hold sway meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

hold sway in Bengali

সবচেয়ে বেশি প্রভাব থাকা, প্রাধান্য বিস্তার করা, শাসন করা

hold sway in Malayalam

wield power, hold power, exercise power
വാഴുക, പ്രാബല്യം ഉണ്ടായിരിക്കുക, അധികാരം ചെലുത്തുക, ആജ്ഞാശക്തിയുണ്ടായിരിക്കുക, അധികാരം നടത്തുക, അധികാരം കെെയാളുക

Forms of hold sway

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

Questions about hold sway

What does hold sway mean?
Hold sway means to have the greatest influence (over someone or something); to be pre-eminent; to dominate.
What is hold sway in Bengali?
Hold sway in Bengali is সবচেয়ে বেশি প্রভাব থাকা, প্রাধান্য বিস্তার করা, শাসন করা. See Hold sway meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is hold sway?
Hold sway is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold sway?
The past tense of hold sway is held sway.

Words near hold sway in the dictionary

  1. hold short
  2. hold someone's feet to the fire
  3. hold someone's hand
  4. hold space
  5. hold still
  6. hold sway
  7. hold tack
  8. hold that thought
  9. hold the aces
  10. hold the book
  11. hold the cards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold sway (page history and authors); hold sway (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hold sway (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: en-au-hold sway.ogg.

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