Name: Phrasal verbs with HOLD: hold on, hold off, etc. – American English
Uploaded: 2016-09-28T02:19:18.000Z
Duration: 7 min 33 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The imperative

To-infinitive

In this American English pronunciation video, we’re going to discuss phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition, adverb, or both.

The combination creates a different meaning than the words on their own.

We have a lot of these idiomatic phrases in English.

Today we'll discuss the phrasal verb ‘hold’.

First, since HOLD is a verb, it's a content word and will be stressed.

So you want to use the shape of stress when saying HOLD.

You don’t need to make this sound too heavy, HH, HH, hh, hh.

It’s a very light sound in American English.

Just expel air from an open mouth, contracting the throat just a bit. Hh. Hold.

The mouth position doesn’t matter for the H, so you can get into position for the next sound,

The OH diphthong in this word is a little different because of the Dark L that comes next.

I round my lips more for the beginning of the sound than I do for other words with the OH diphthong.

Then I go into the Dark L, where the back part of my tongue pulls back.

So the tongue tip stays forward, Hol-lll, but the back part of the tongue stretches back.

And to end, the front part of the tongue goes to the roof of the mouth and releases for the D.

The verb ‘hold’, on it’s own, means to carry, grasp,

or support something in your arms or hands: I'm holding my YouTube badge.

It can also mean to keep someone or detain someone or something:

Now let’s look at some of the common phrasal verbs with hold.

Hold on. This can mean “wait” or “stop”.

We may use this in command form: Hold on, you’re over reacting.

Here it means, stop what you’re saying, I think you’re over reacting.

If you were trying to give someone a ride on your motorcycle, you might say, “hold on tight!”

meaning they should literally grip tightly so that they don’t fall off.

If you add ‘to’ to that phrasal verb – hold on to – you're saying “don’t let it go".

It can be a person or a thing, or even an emotion.

For example, the team is holding on to the lead.

He holds on to his belief in Santa Claus.

Hold on to my purse while I use the restroom, please.

In each of these examples, someone is  “not letting go” of something.

When you “hold off”, you're delaying doing something.

Let’s hold off on the announcement until next week. That means let’s delay the announcement.

Hold off on running the report until you get the final numbers from me.

This one is similar to “hold off” – it also means to delay something or someone.

“I hope I’m not holding you up” means I hope I’m not delaying you.

The bus held up traffic with all of its stops and starts.

‘Hold up’ can also refer to how long something will last.

How long do you think this sunshine will hold up?

My car isn’t holding up well, it’s already been to the repair shop twice.

Hold down. This one can mean physically holding something down.

Hold down the picnic blanket so it doesn’t blow away.

‘I just can’t hold down a job’ means I just can’t keep  a job for very long, I keep getting fired.

Or it can refer to not being able to eat food without vomiting.

When I have the flu, I can’t hold anything down.

They sound like they should be opposites but they’re not.

They just have completely different meanings.

This is what makes phrasal verbs interesting, and also, confusing.

This means to restrain someone or something.

If a friend was about to fight someone,  you might hold him back.

You always hold your feelings back,  you never tell me how you really feel,

You can literally hold something against something else.

I’m holding the ice against my knee  because I fell and it hurts.

It can also mean that you hold a grudge against someone,

meaning you will not forgive someone  because of something they’ve done.

As in, I’m still upset about what she said.

There’s a lot you can do with phrasal verbs that use the word HOLD.

Create practice sentences for each of the phrasal verbs above to help you grasp

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If you liked this video, there’s a lot more to learn about American English pronunciation,