Word.ws English Dictionary

holdouts

holdouts is the plural of holdout.

Meaning of holdout

Noun

holdout (plural holdouts)

  1. One who refuses to give consent to an agreement in the hope of an improved offer; one who holds out; one who clings to a cause that has been mostly abandoned.
    • If Facebook chooses to remain a holdout, it will not be as the head of a countercoalition but as a cranky recluse.2007 November 4, Randall Stross, “Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 28 Jun 2019
  2. A device for cheating at card games by covertly holding a card out of play until it is wanted.
    • He is probably working a vest or sleeve hold-out. Some clumsy or audacious sharpers will go so far as to hold out cards in their lap, or stick them in a "bug" under the table.1897, Robert Frederick Foster, Foster's Complete Hoyle, page 195

Questions about holdouts

What is holdouts the plural of?
Holdouts is the plural of holdout.

Words near holdouts in the dictionary

  1. holdoff
  2. holdoffs
  3. Holdorf
  4. Holdorfs
  5. holdout
  6. holdouts
  7. holdover
  8. holdover fire
  9. holdover fires
  10. holdovers
  11. Holdrege

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holdouts (page history and authors); holdout (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-holdouts.wav.

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