HOLD - Basic Verbs - Learn English Grammar

wanna speak real English from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at English class 101.com hi everybody welcome back to know your verbs my name is Alicia and in this episode we're going to talk about the verb hold let's go the basic definition of the verb hold is just to have in your hand to have something so like hold my beer hold my beer or I want to hold your hand hold my beer or I want to hold your hand for example so let's look at the conjugations for this verb present hold holds past held past participle held progressive holding so now let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb the first additional meaning for this word is to have a position or some special distinction so let's look at some examples of this he held the world record for doughnut-eating for three years she holds the top position in the company so in these situations we see like a position someone's job someone's position or some kind of special distinguishing mark like a world-record holder or a record holder so he holds or she holds a position currently can refer to someone's job so we can also use it for something that we had in the past some special distinction we had in the past like he held a world record or maybe for a present distinction we can say she holds the world record for something so profession a job a special kind of recognition we can use the word hold to describe them the second extra meaning quite broadly is to restrained to restrain so like to hold something back some examples of this hold your fire he has trouble holding his temper the first example sentence was hold your fire if you've ever watched a war movie or maybe a historical drama some kind of film like that you might have heard the expression hold your fire so fire means shooting so hold means restrain or stop from doing something so hold your fire I mean stop shooting your gun hold your fire so if you've ever seen a war movie you might have heard this expression hold your fire in the second one he has trouble holding his temper so to hold your temper one's temper is ones emotional control so to hold your temper means to be able to control your emotions so usually when we say temper it means our angry emotions so he has trouble holding his temper means it's difficult for him to control his angry emotions or it's difficult for him to control his anger so hold your temper control your anger but it sounds a little less direct the next meaning is to carry out to carry out like an event so examples of this the company is holding a conference tomorrow we held an event at the concert hall last year okay so in the first example sentence we see the company is holding a conference tomorrow so holding in the progressive tense refers to a future plan the company is holding in other words the company is going to carry out some event tomorrow the company is going to carry out a conference tomorrow but instead of saying going to carry out we can say the company is holding a conference tomorrow so meaning an event is going to occur in the second example sentence we held an event at the concert hall last year we see the past tense we held an event meaning we carried out an event some event happened there last year but we can use hold or in this case the past tense version held to describe that quickly let's look at some variations on the use of this verb the first variation is to hold one's breath to hold one's breath means two just to keep air in your lungs so like when you go swimming for example you hold your breath so it's a short example of that but to keep the air in your lungs so now not taking air in not taking air out that's to hold your breath examples how long can you hold your breath he held his breath until his face turned red so we can use this expression to mean like keeping the air in our lungs however we also have a set expression which is don't hold your breath so don't hold your breath means don't wait for something to happen because it's going to take a long time so for example if you are hoping that you are going to get a huge raise and a big house like next year or something like that you really really really want this big I don't know bonus or something like that you might say to your coach you're calling or your coworkers yeah I really want this I really want like this much more money your coworker might say to you don't hold your breath meaning it's going to take a long time so the image in this situation is that if you hold your breath you can only do it for a short period of time a few seconds maybe a minute or so so don't hold your breath means the suggestion you made is going to take a long time so you're going to hurt yourself or get in trouble if you expect it's going to happen quickly so don't hold your breath the next expression is to hold your horses or to hold one's horses so this expression means to restrain or to keep in your enthusiasm so it's like you're too excited calm down in other words some examples hold your horses there will be plenty of time for celebration when the project is finished whoa hold your horses were not done yet so in both of these examples sentences we see hold your horses meaning there's too much enthusiasm you need to slow down so I guess horses is used here because horses are like annum that want to run quickly they're like fast have lots of energy but to say hold your horses means keep them back keep them restrained but not literally horses it means like your energy your enthusiasm means keep it restrained for now and oftentimes that just means because we're using the verb hold it means restrain it and then maybe later you can use that just it doesn't mean like stop your enthusiasm it means just keep it back for now so hold your horses another common expression so those are a few different uses of the verb hold I hope that it was useful for you if you have any questions or comments or if you want to try to make a sentence using this verb please feel free to do so in the comment section if you liked the video please give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and check us out at English class 101.com thanks for watching this episode of know your verbs and we'll see you again next time bye bye yeah that's true we use hold on the phone I never explained that like when we want to like when we're on the phone with someone and like we need to contact someone else we can say please hold and we put the phone down thank you for holding that's a very common one

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Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2018