Main Entry: hold up

Function: verb

Date: 1851

transitive verb

1 : to rob at gunpoint
2 : delay, impede
3 : to call attention to : single out <his work was held up to ridicule> <hold this up as perfection — Times Literary Supplement>intransitive verb : to continue in the same condition without failing or losing effectiveness or force <she's holding up under the strain> <music that holds up twenty years later>