Word.ws English Dictionary

holding to account

holding to account is the present participle and gerund of hold to account.

Meaning of hold to account

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To require a person to explain or to accept responsibility for his or her actions; to blame or punish someone for what has occurred.
    • [W]hatever they decided to do out there in the wilderness meant thousands of dollars to the stockholders somewhere up in God's country, who would some day hold them to account.1906, Richard Harding Davis, chapter 1, in Soldiers of Fortune
    Synonyms:
    call to account, hold accountable, hold responsible, take to task

Questions about holding to account

What is holding to account the present participle and gerund of?
Holding to account is the present participle and gerund of hold to account.

Words near holding to account in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holding to account (page history and authors); hold to account (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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