hold one's water
"hold-one-s-water" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hold one's water” is outside the top-ranked English vocabulary, used as a verb - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To restrain one's urge to urinate.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hold one's water |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hold one's water” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hold one's water is 16 letters long, classified as a verb. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Zero misspellings are on record for hold one's water in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is hold one's water, spelled H-O-L-D- -O-N-E-'-S- -W-A-T-E-R.
Definition
- 1To restrain one's urge to urinate.
- 2To be patient; to control one's impulses.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “hold one's water”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is H-O-L-D- -O-N-E-'-S- -W-A-T-E-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.