Word.ws English Dictionary

hold to

hold to verb: to share or subscribe to (a belief, etc.).

Verb

hold to (third-person singular simple present holds to, present participle holding to, simple past held to, past participle held to or (archaic) holden to)

  1. (transitive) To share or subscribe to (a belief, etc.).
    • I do not hold to their radical opinions.
  2. (transitive) To adhere strongly to (a conviction, story, etc.).
    • to hold to one's original story
    • Despite contrary admonitions, they held to their fundamentalist Christian views.
  3. To follow, be consistent with (a rule, pattern, etc.)
    • The poem which holds strictly to Rağaz-meter (altered) is set to music unrelated in time.1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 116
  4. (ditransitive) To compel (someone) to remain faithful to (a commitment, moral standard, etc.).
    • Jill holds her grandfather to her own standards and finds them wanting.

Forms of hold to

third-person singular presentholds to
present participleholding to
pastheld to
past participleheld to
past participle (archaic)holden to

Words formed from hold to

Questions about hold to

What does hold to mean?
Hold to means to share or subscribe to (a belief, etc.).
What part of speech is hold to?
Hold to is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold to?
The past tense of hold to is held to.

Words near hold to in the dictionary

  1. hold the road
  2. hold the stage
  3. hold tight
  4. hold time
  5. hold times
  6. hold to
  7. hold to account
  8. hold to ransom
  9. hold together
  10. hold true
  11. hold up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold to (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 to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hold_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.