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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

hold-up en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /ˈhoʊldˌʌp/ (General-American)

Etymology

A deverbal from hold up.

Meanings

  1. (colloquial) A delay or wait.
    • The crossing caused serious congestion with long traffic hold-ups, and had been a bone of contention between the local authorities and the railway for over eighty years. It was controlled from Fletton Road Junction Signalbox (removed at the same time) and, until a wheel was installed in 1920, required two gatemen on each turn of duty. 1959 April 14, C. R. Clinker and R. A. Dane, “The Railways of Peterborough”, in Railway Magazine, page 230:
    • What is the hold-up?
    • The curse has been Spanish ineptitude feeding Gibraltarian intransigence. Border hold-ups are counterproductive to winning hearts and minds, as were blundering Argentinian landings on the outer Falklands. 2013 August 14, Simon Jenkins, “Gibraltar and the Falklands deny the logic of history”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2021:
  2. (slang) A robbery at gunpoint.
    • They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God. 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168:
    • This is a hold-up! Give us all your money.
  3. The holding back of a card that could win a trick in order to use it later.
    • This was another hand on which a holdup caused declarer to lose control and to go down in a sensational way: […] 1974, Terence Reese, Master Play in Contract Bridge, page 75:
    • In a holdup, a player delays taking a trick until opponents' entries are reduced. 2014, Nicolae Sfetcu, The Bridge Game:
  4. (in-plural) Women's stockings designed to be worn without suspenders.
  5. The inventory of nuclear material within a separation plant.
    • And to the left is a portable gamma counter that tells us the holdup of plutonium recovery facilities. 1978, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Intelligence and Military Application of Nuclear Energy Subcommittee, Hearings on H.R. 11036 (H.R. 11686) (page 361)
    • During process operations and temporary shutdown, the holdup within the facility is also known as the in-process inventory. 1989, Energy Research Abstracts, page 2046:
  6. (Nigeria) A traffic jam.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
hold-ups Number=Plur lexicographic

Deriveds

hold-upper · hold-up squad · antiholdup

Descendants

hold-up · holdap · holdap

Synonyms

hold-up · cunctation · dilation · stickup · deferment · holdoff · armed robbery · detain · retard · respite · cunctation · hesitancy · prorogation · hesitation · postponement · delay · holdoff · hesitance · hinder

Translations (16)

ru налёт (a robbery at gunpoint) · de Aufhalten (a delay or wait) · fr hold-up (a robbery at gunpoint) · de Verzögerung (a delay or wait) · fi ryöstö (a robbery at gunpoint) · de Stockung (a delay or wait) · ru грабёж (a robbery at gunpoint) · pl poślizg (a delay or wait) · de bewaffneter Raubüberfall (a robbery at gunpoint) · it rapina (a robbery at gunpoint) · sv rån (a robbery at gunpoint) · it autoreggente ((in the plural) Women's stockings designed to be worn without suspenders) · pt latrocínio (a robbery at gunpoint) · bg грабеж (a robbery at gunpoint) · ru разбой (a robbery at gunpoint) · de Stillstand (a delay or wait)