Word.ws English Dictionary

holds water

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

Meaning of hold water

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To withstand scrutiny or criticism; to be valid.
    • "Young man," he said, "upon this point I can only say that your story is grossly improbable. It won't hold water."1888, Horatio Alger, chapter 35, in The Errand Boy

Questions about holds water

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

Words near holds water in the dictionary

  1. holds true
  2. holds up
  3. holds up a mirror to
  4. holds up as
  5. holds up one's end
  6. holds water
  7. holds with
  8. holds with the hare and runs with the hounds
  9. holdsman
  10. holdsmen
  11. Holdsworth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holds water (page history and authors); hold water (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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