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