held
adjective · n
Simple meaning
Past form of hold: kept in your hands, controlled, or made to happen.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hehldIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhɛld
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Occupied or in the control of; often used in combination
n
"Held" is a song by Smog, released as his first single from his 1999 album Knock Knock.
A 2023 novel by writer and poet Anne Michaels, published by Knopf, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Occupied or in the control of; often used in combination
Used this way, held is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use held
- “Enemy-held territory.”adjective
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A portable battery-powered computer small enough to be carried in your pocket.
A corporation owned by a few people.
A portable battery-powered computer small enough to be carried in your pocket.
Small and light enough to be operated while you hold it in your hands.
Stock is publicly traded but most is held by a few shareholders who have no plans to sell.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A small portable drill held and operated by hand.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.