Word.ws English Dictionary

offhold

offhold verb: to retain.

Verb

offhold (third-person singular simple present offholds, present participle offholding, simple past offheld, past participle offheld or offholden)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To retain.
  2. (intransitive) To hold off; prevent; refrain; avoid; shun.
    • A scleral rim should be maintained in contact lenses to off-hold and balance the corneal portion from the cornea, preventing exertion of any pressure.1950, Washington Institute of Medicine, General practice clinics
    • No, Love, you must be shunned by every means, offheld and offstood afar, for the man that has fallen headlong into love comes o greater grief than if he cast himself off a cliff.1968, Titus Maccius Plautus, Paul Nixon, Plautus

Forms of offhold

third-person singular presentoffholds
present participleoffholding
pastoffheld
past participleoffheld
past participleoffholden
alternative formoff-hold

Origin of offhold

From Middle English ofholden, from Old English ofhealdan (“to withhold, retain”), equivalent to off- + hold. Cognate with Dutch afhouden (“to detain, deter”), German abhalten (“to discourage, prevent, deter”).

Questions about offhold

What does offhold mean?
Offhold means to retain.
What part of speech is offhold?
Offhold is a verb.
What is the past tense of offhold?
The past tense of offhold is offheld.

Words near offhold in the dictionary

  1. offhand
  2. offhanded
  3. offhandedly
  4. offhandedness
  5. offheld
  6. offhold
  7. offholding
  8. offholds
  9. officah
  10. offical
  11. offically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: offhold (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: “offhold.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/offhold. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.