Word.ws English Dictionary

holdfastness

holdfastness noun: the ability to serve as a secure basis for attachment.

Noun

holdfastness (uncountable)

  1. The ability to serve as a secure basis for attachment.
    • […] a healthy copartnership of American enterprise and enthusiasm, and English solidity and holdfastness.1865, Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent, page 206
    • […] the Furies of hate and many other allegorical figures of later times are potencies of a kind, but they are without affirmative subsistency and holdfastness, unfavourable to ideal representation, […]1962, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henry Paolucci, Hegel on Tragedy, page 135

Origin of holdfastness

From holdfast + -ness.

Questions about holdfastness

What does holdfastness mean?
Holdfastness means the ability to serve as a secure basis for attachment.
What part of speech is holdfastness?
Holdfastness is a noun.

Words near holdfastness in the dictionary

  1. holderships
  2. holdest
  3. holdeth
  4. holdfast
  5. Holdfast Bay
  6. holdfastness
  7. holdfasts
  8. holdin'
  9. holding
  10. holding a candle
  11. holding a candle for

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holdfastness (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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