hold the ring
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To preside over or officiate a boxing match
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
chủ trì hoặc điều khiển một trận đấu quyền anh
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: hold the ring
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The judge is there to hold the ring impartially and to direct the jury on the law.
People like daddy have to hold the ring, they're a sort of bedrock, to make sure there's always some civilisation to fall back on.
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 ring” mean?
To preside over or officiate a boxing match Literally: hold the ring
Is “hold the ring” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.