Library / English Dictionary

WITHHOLD

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: withheld   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Hold back; refuse to hand over or share

Example:

The father is withholding the allowance until the son cleans his room

Synonyms:

keep back; withhold

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "withhold" is one way to...):

deny; refuse (refuse to let have)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "withhold"):

block; freeze; immobilise; immobilize (prohibit the conversion or use of (assets))

keep to oneself (withhold information)

deny (refuse to grant, as of a petition or request)

reserve (hold back or set aside, especially for future use or contingency)

immobilise; immobilize (hold as reserve or withdraw from circulation; of capital)

deprive (keep from having, keeping, or obtaining)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something from somebody

Sentence example:

They withhold the money

Derivation:

withholder (a person who restrains or checks or holds back)

withholder (a person who refrains from granting)

withholding (the act of holding back or keeping within your possession or control)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Retain and refrain from disbursing; of payments

Example:

My employer is withholding taxes

Synonyms:

deduct; recoup; withhold

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "withhold" is one way to...):

hold on; keep (retain possession of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "withhold"):

dock (deduct from someone's wages)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something from somebody

Sentence example:

They withhold the money

Derivation:

withholder (a person who refrains from granting)

withholding (the act of deducting from an employee's salary)

withholding (income tax withheld from employees' wages and paid directly to the government by the employer)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Banks become demanding, clients withhold payments, and the need for contingency funds often becomes vital to help you over the hump until promised money arrives.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I tried to stifle these sensations; I thought that as I could not sympathise with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

If your husband thinks fit to keep you in the dark over this matter, is it for me, who has only learned the true facts under the pledge of professional secrecy, to tell what he has withheld?

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After many adventures which I need not describe, and after traveling a distance which I will not mention, in a direction which I withhold, we came at last to a tract of country which has never been described, nor, indeed, visited save by my unfortunate predecessor.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It was some minutes before she could go on with her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still obliged her, at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of her feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the last time to Willoughby.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Her partiality for this gentleman was not of recent origin; and he had been long withheld only by inferiority of situation from addressing her.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I could not give her pain by asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was close upon him, my knife uplifted, but I withheld the blow.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)