Chapter Hogshead to Holy City of H by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Hold Out Not to succumb to. "Tenir ferme; " "Cette place ne saurait tenir. "

Hold Water (To). To bear close inspection; to endure a trial. A vessel that will hold water is safe and sound.

Hold One Guilty (To). To adjudge or regard as guilty. The French tenir.

Hold One in Hand (To). To amuse in order to get some advantage. The allusion is to horses held in hand or under command of the driver.

Hold One's Own (To). To maintain one's own opinion, position, way, etc. Maintain means to hold with the hand. (Latin, manus teneo.)

Hold the Fort Immortalised as a phrase from its use by General Sherman, who signalled it to General Corse from the top of Kenesaw in 1864.

Holdfast Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Promises are all very good, but acts are far better.

"Holdfast is the only dog, my duck."
Shakespeare: Henry V., ii. 3.

Holdfast A means by which something is clamped to another; a support.

Hole Pick a hole in his coat. To find out some cause of blame. The allusion is to the Roman custom of dressing criminals in rags (Livy, ii. 61). Hence, a holey coat is a synonym for guilt.

"Hear, Land o' cakes and brither Scots
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's
If there's a hole in a your coats
I rede you tent it;
A chield's amang you taking notes,
And, faith, he'll prent it."
Burns: On the late Capt. Grose, stanza 1.

Hole and Corner (business). Underhand and secret.

Holiday Speeches or Words. Fine or well-turned speeches or phrases; complimentary speeches. We have also "holiday manners," "holiday clothes," meaning the best we have.

"Aye, aye, sir. I know your worship loves no holiday speeches." - Sir W. Scott: Redgauntlet, chap. iii.

"With many holiday and lady terms
He questioned me."
Shakespeare: I Henry IV., i. 3 (Hotspur's defence).

Holiphernes (4 syl.), called English Henry (in Jerusalem Delivered). One of the Christian knights in the first crusade, slain by Dragutes (book ix.).

Holland The country of paradoxes. The "houses are built on the sand;" the sea is higher than the shore; the keels of the ships are above the chimney-tops of the houses; and the cow's tail does not "grow downward," but is tied up to a ring in the roof of the stable. Butler calls it:

"A land that rides at anchor and is moored,
In which they do not live, but go aboard."
Description of Holland.

(See also Don Juan, canto x. 63.)
   Holland. A particular kind of cloth; so called because it used to be sent to Holland to be bleached. Lawn is cloth bleached on a lawn; and grass-lawn is lawn bleached on a grass-plat.
   Bleaching is now performed by artificial processes.

Hollow I beat him hollow. A corruption of "I beat him wholly."

Holly used to be employed by the early Christians at Rome to decorate churches and dwellings at Christmas; it had been previously used in the great festival of the Saturnalia, which occurred at the same season of the year. The pagan Romans used to send to their friends holly-sprigs, during the Saturnalia, with wishes for their health and well-being.

Hollyhock is the Anglo-Saxon, holihoc, the marsh-mallow. It is a mistake to derive it from Holy-oak.

Holman (Lieutenant James). The blind traveller (1787-1857).