Word.ws English Dictionary

hold the ring

UK/ˈhəʊld ðə ˌɹɪŋ/US/ˈhoʊld ðə ˌɹɪŋ/

hold the ring verb: to maintain order among spectators encircling participants in a prizefight or a performance and keep them from coming too near the participants.

hold the ring: to maintain order among spectators encircling participants in a prizefight or a performance and...
Image: Royal Navy official photographer, Russell, J E (Lt), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

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

  1. (obsolete) To maintain order among spectators encircling participants in a prizefight or a performance and keep them from coming too near the participants.
    Synonyms:
    keep the ring
  2. To be a spectator at a fight; (figuratively) to watch other people argue.
  3. (UK, idiomatic) To oversee a situation while attempting to remain uninvolved in it.
    • Police held the ring during the protests.
    • In England a century earlier it had been a struggle between two warring houses, in France it was now a struggle between three: Guise, Montmorency and Bourbon, with the feeble government of Catherine de Medici vainly trying to hold the ring.1968, J. Hurstfield, “Social Structure, Office-holding and Politics, Chiefly in Western Europe”, in R[ichard] B[ruce] Wernham, editor, The New Cambridge Modern History, volumes III (The...
  4. Of a prizefighter: to hold one's own during a fight; to continue winning a series of fights.

Synonyms of hold the ring

  • keep the ring

Forms of hold the ring

third-person singular presentholds the ring
present participleholding the ring
past participleheld the ring
pastheld the ring

Origin of hold the ring

Probably from keep the ring. In days past when spectators would encircle participants in a prizefight or a performance, people would be employed to maintain order among them and keep them from coming too near the participants.

Questions about hold the ring

What does hold the ring mean?
Hold the ring means to maintain order among spectators encircling participants in a prizefight or a performance and keep them from coming too near the participants.
What part of speech is hold the ring?
Hold the ring is a verb.
How do you pronounce hold the ring?
Hold the ring is pronounced /ˈhəʊld ðə ˌɹɪŋ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of hold the ring?
The past tense of hold the ring is held the ring.

Words near hold the ring in the dictionary

  1. hold the fort
  2. hold the line
  3. hold the phone
  4. hold the purse strings
  5. hold the reins
  6. hold the ring
  7. hold the road
  8. hold the stage
  9. hold tight
  10. hold time
  11. hold times

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold the ring (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 the ring.ogg.

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