hold with the hare and run with the hounds
hold with the hare and run with the hounds verb: to oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite.
Verb
hold with the hare and run with the hounds (third-person singular simple present holds with the hare and runs with the hounds, present participle holding with the hare and running with the hounds, simple past held with the hare and ran with the hounds, past participle held with the hare and run with the hounds)
- To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite.
- Well, if you ask me, Pastor Hawkins is trying to hold with the hare and run with the hounds by opposing casino gambling when his church operates a bingo game every Thursday night.
- […] Laddes that canne holde with the Hare and hunt with the Hounde, and (as the Scripture termeth them) time-seruers and menpleasers.1571, Arthur Golding, “Epistle Dedicatorie”, in The Psalms of David and others. With M. John Calvin Commentaries, page xxix (29)
- To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy.
- Julianna needs to be careful if she keeps holding with the hare and running with the hounds; she might wind up making enemies of both labor and management.
- Eleventhly, There is yet another profeſſor ; and he is for God and for Baal too, he can be any thing, for any company : he can throw ſtones with both hands, […] he'll hold with the hair, and run with the hound, he carries fire in one hand, and water i'th t'other^([sic – meaning in th'other]) ; […]1676, John Bunyan, The Strait Gate, or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven, London: Francis Smith, page 144
Examples of hold with the hare and run with the hounds in a sentence
- Thousands try to hold with the hare and run with the hounds, they are for God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, truth and error, and so are “neither hot nor cold.”1874, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, An Earnest Warning on Lukewarmness, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2025:
- How happy is the man who knows really how to hold with the hare and run with the hounds! in other words, to be equally agreeable to both husband and wife.1871 October, George Webbe Dasent, “Three to One”, in M[ary] E[lizabeth] Braddon, editor, Belgravia, London: Willmer & Rogers, chapter iv....
Forms of hold with the hare and run with the hounds
| third-person singular present | holds with the hare and runs with the hounds |
|---|---|
| present participle | holding with the hare and running with the hounds |
| past | held with the hare and ran with the hounds |
| past participle | held with the hare and run with the hounds |
Questions about hold with the hare and run with the hounds
- What does hold with the hare and run with the hounds mean?
- Hold with the hare and run with the hounds means to oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite.
- How do you use hold with the hare and run with the hounds in a sentence?
- Thousands try to hold with the hare and run with the hounds, they are for God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, truth and error, and so are “neither hot nor cold.”
- What part of speech is hold with the hare and run with the hounds?
- Hold with the hare and run with the hounds is a verb.
- What is the past tense of hold with the hare and run with the hounds?
- The past tense of hold with the hare and run with the hounds is held with the hare and ran with the hounds.
Words near hold with the hare and run with the hounds in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hold with the hare and run with the hounds (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 with the hare and run with the hounds.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hold with the hare and run with the hounds.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hold_with_the_hare_and_run_with_the_hounds. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.