Word.ws English Dictionary

holds fire

holds fire is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hold fire.

Meaning of hold fire

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To wait for an opportunity to shoot (with a firearm) at something or someone.
    Antonyms:
    open fire, fire
    1. (imperative, intransitive) Do not fire.
      • Hold fire!
  2. (intransitive) To delay taking action.
    • I have seen so much really credible evidence that the situation did not devolve the way we're being told it did. And then, another body of credible evidence that it was very different from what we're being told it is that I'm holding fire until I see the Warren Commission report on the...2025 September 23, Lawrence Wilkerson, Nima R Alkhorshid's Dialogue Works, YouTube
    Synonyms:
    hold up, hold on

Questions about holds fire

What is holds fire the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Holds fire is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hold fire.

Words near holds fire in the dictionary

  1. holds court
  2. holds dear
  3. holds down
  4. holds down the fort
  5. holds fast
  6. holds fire
  7. holds firm
  8. holds for ransom
  9. holds forth
  10. holds good
  11. holds hostage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holds fire (page history and authors); hold fire (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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Cite this entry: “holds fire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holds_fire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.