Word.ws English Dictionary

hold the stage

hold the stage verb: to continue to be produced.

Verb

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

  1. To continue to be produced.
  2. (idiomatic) To dominate a debate or field of interest; to be the main subject of attention.
    • At this time Selye’s theories of stress held the stage, and the beneficial effects of spa treatment were considered in 1950 to be possibly due to adrenocortical stimulation and increased glucocorticoid output, rather than to simple physical and psychological factors.1976 March 27, F. Dudley Hart, “History of the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis”, in British Medical Journal, volume 1, number 6012, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 764

Forms of hold the stage

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

Questions about hold the stage

What does hold the stage mean?
Hold the stage means to continue to be produced.
What part of speech is hold the stage?
Hold the stage is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold the stage?
The past tense of hold the stage is held the stage.

Words near hold the stage in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold the stage (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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Cite this entry: “hold the stage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hold_the_stage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.