hold back
"hold-back" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hold back” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hold-back · hold back · English
hold back · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "H" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hold back |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hold back” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hold back is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for hold back in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is hold back, spelled H-O-L-D- -B-A-C-K.
Definition
- 1To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power.
- 2To contain; stop.
- 3To delay the progress of, especially in school.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how hold back appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Don't hold back. Hit it as hard as you can.
The TSSA union, which along with the RMT represents many of the staff affected by the closures, hasn't held back on its criticism.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.