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💪 To endure 🏗️ To support weight ⏳ To delay 🌟 To praise publicly 🔫 To rob
to hold up

to hold up

28 5.8
To rob someone using a weapon or threats
  • phrasal verb
  • /hoʊld ʌp/
  • NSFW
: atracar
  • As soon as we get well, we're going to hold up that bank.
  • hold up at gunpoint
  • hold up a store
  • hold up a bank

So if you say you've you've held somebody up and took their wallet, that's stealing, right?

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Examples

  • Authorities reported that a masked man held up a convenience store with a gun last night.

  • The armed robber threatened the cashier and demanded that she hold up the money in the register.

  • So her plan was to break in here, hold them up, take the money and go, you know what I mean?

    Anything Goes With James English

  • One time, they even stopped a guy who tried to hold me up.

    Academic text (1994)

  • - The bank was held up by two men in space suits.

    Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

  • The Kelly Gang had been holding up banks for as long as, well, for as long as there'd been banks.

    Reckless Kelly (1993)

  • But then the robbers track Ellen down, hold her up at gunpoint, and kidnap her.

    Blog text (10)

  • During the investigation, police revealed that several suspects had held up various banks before their capture.

Synonyms

to stick up
vsto hold up
  • NSFW
5 8.4

To rob a person or shop by threatening them with a weapon

has identical meaning but uses broader words someone or something

How Serious

to hold up
  • NSFW
28 5.8
to rob
696 1.2
to steal
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

hold up infinitive
holding up present participle
holds up third person singular
held up past
held up past participle

Morphology

hold + up

The meaning 'to rob (at gunpoint)' cannot be predicted from the literal senses of 'hold' and 'up' — there is no clear compositional relation that leads to 'rob'. The particle 'up' here contributes to an idiomatic phrasal-verb sense (distinct from literal senses like 'raise' or 'delay'), so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would very likely not infer the robbery meaning.

Etymology

Hold up meaning 'rob' comes from the image of a thief holding someone up at gunpoint, stopping them and taking their money, so the phrase means 'rob'.