MEANING
To take care of a place or responsibility while the person normally in charge is away.
Use it for
covering a colleague’s temporary absence; keeping an operation running; looking after a shared responsibility; describing temporary rather than permanent leadershipDescribes temporarily maintaining responsibility while someone else is away. Writing functions: Temporary responsibility.
Words that belong together
- hold the fort while someone is away
On the page
Could you hold the fort while I take the visitor to the station?
The assistant held the fort until the curator returned from the excavation.
Word forms
- Base
- hold the fort
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: hold/holds/held/held/holding the fort. American English also hold down the fort. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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