hold the line
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Maintain a position or situation against opposition
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
giữ vững vị trí hoặc tình huống trước sự phản đối
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: physically hold a line
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
But I'd've thought that, that generally speaking, we should have been able to at least hold the line.
Gloucester tried to muster the troops but Bristol held the line and their nerves and took the match 16 -12.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “hold the line” mean?
Maintain a position or situation against opposition Literally: physically hold a line
Is “hold the line” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.