withhold
verb
Simple meaning
To keep to oneself rather than revealing it.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wihthhohldSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
wɪθˈhoʊld
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.
verb
transitive
To keep (information, assent etc) to oneself rather than revealing it.
transitive
To keep (a physical object that one has obtained) to oneself rather than giving it back to its owner.
Hold back; refuse to hand over or share
“The father is withholding the allowance until the son cleans his room.”
intransitive
To stay back, to refrain.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To keep (information, assent etc) to oneself rather than revealing it.
Used this way, withhold is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- recoup , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use withhold
- “The father is withholding the allowance until the son cleans his room.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The act of deducting from an employee's salary.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Income tax withheld from employees' wages and paid directly to the government by the employer.
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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.