holdover
/ˈhoʊldˌoʊvɚ/
holdover noun: something left behind, saved or remaining from an earlier time.
Noun
holdover (countable and uncountable, plural holdovers)
- Something left behind, saved or remaining from an earlier time.
- That policy is a holdover from days of punch card data entry.
- Castle Rock Middle School was a frowning pile of red brick standing between the Post Office and the Library, a holdover from the time when the town elders didn't feel entirely comfortable with a school unless it looked like a reformatory.1991, Stephen King, Needful Things
- The distance (at target) by which a rifle scope is aimed higher than the intended point of impact in order to compensate for bullet drop over the distance to the target.
- This rangefinder not only measures the distance to the target, but also provides a digital readout of the inches of holdover at that distance.
Forms of holdover
| plural | holdovers |
|---|
Origin of holdover
Deverbal from hold over.
Words formed from holdover
Phrases with holdover
Questions about holdover
- What does holdover mean?
- Holdover means something left behind, saved or remaining from an earlier time.
- What part of speech is holdover?
- Holdover is a noun.
- How do you pronounce holdover?
- Holdover is pronounced /ˈhoʊldˌoʊvɚ/ (US).
- What is the plural of holdover?
- The plural of holdover is holdovers.
Words near holdover in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: holdover (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-holdover.ogg.
Cite this entry: “holdover.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holdover. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.