hold back
— phrasal verb with hold /həʊld/
/hoʊld/ verb (held, held)Definition
› to not do something, often because of fear or because you do not want to make a bad situation worse: He held back, terrified of going into the dark room.Avoiding actionLaziness and lazy people
(Definition of hold back from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
© Cambridge University Press)
Browse related topics
You are looking at an entry to do with Avoiding action, but you might be interested in these topics from the Doing and achieving topic area:
- Abstaining and refraining
- Acting and acts
- Becoming better
- Cancelling and interrupting
- Competing and contending (non-sporting)
- Coping and not coping
- Delaying and wasting time
- Describing the leading position
- Efficient and effective
- Expressions telling people to hurry up
- Failing and doing badly
- Failures
- Getting involved for one's own benefit or against others' will
- Hesitating
- Higher and lower points of achievement
- Hurrying and doing things quickly
- Making progress and advancing
- Making things better
- Performing a function
- Potential
- Reacting and responding
- Repeating an action
- Succeeding, achieving and fulfilling
- Success and achievements
- Successful (things or people)
- Surpassing in quality or number
- Taking part and getting involved
- Trying and making an effort
- Unsuccessful (people and things)
- Waiting
- Ways of achieving things
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More Results for “hold back”
SMART Thesaurus
Synonyms and related words:
- avoid sth like the plague idiom
- avoid verb
- avoidance noun
- bottle out phrasal verb
- chicken out phrasal verb
- eschew verb
- evade verb
- evasion noun
- fiddle about/around phrasal verb
- fight shy of idiom
- flinch from sth/doing sth phrasal verb
- mess around phrasal verb (SPEND TIME)
- miss noun (NOT DO)
- miss verb (NOT DO)
- not soil your hands idiom
- obviate verb
- weasel out of sth phrasal verb
- wimp out phrasal verb
- wriggle off the hook idiom
- wriggle out of sth phrasal verb
Topic:
Avoiding action
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