What's the difference between handfast and hold?

Handfast


Definition:

  • (n.) Hold; grasp; custody; power of confining or keeping.
  • (n.) Contract; specifically, espousal.
  • (a.) Fast by contract; betrothed by joining hands.
  • (v. t.) To pledge; to bind; to betroth by joining hands, in order to cohabitation, before the celebration of marriage.
  • (n.) Strong; steadfast.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It was his suggestion to incorporate handfasting into their ceremony, a pagan tradition where the couple’s hands are symbolically tied together with ribbons, which is a common feature of humanist weddings.
  • (2) Overnight he had also carried out around a dozen "handfasting" ceremonies – the pagan equivalent of weddings.

Hold


Definition:

  • (n.) The whole interior portion of a vessel below the lower deck, in which the cargo is stowed.
  • (v. t.) To cause to remain in a given situation, position, or relation, within certain limits, or the like; to prevent from falling or escaping; to sustain; to restrain; to keep in the grasp; to retain.
  • (v. t.) To retain in one's keeping; to maintain possession of, or authority over; not to give up or relinquish; to keep; to defend.
  • (v. t.) To have; to possess; to be in possession of; to occupy; to derive title to; as, to hold office.
  • (v. t.) To impose restraint upon; to limit in motion or action; to bind legally or morally; to confine; to restrain.
  • (v. t.) To maintain in being or action; to carry on; to prosecute, as a course of conduct or an argument; to continue; to sustain.
  • (v. t.) To prosecute, have, take, or join in, as something which is the result of united action; as to, hold a meeting, a festival, a session, etc.; hence, to direct and bring about officially; to conduct or preside at; as, the general held a council of war; a judge holds a court; a clergyman holds a service.
  • (v. t.) To receive and retain; to contain as a vessel; as, this pail holds milk; hence, to be able to receive and retain; to have capacity or containing power for.
  • (v. t.) To accept, as an opinion; to be the adherent of, openly or privately; to persist in, as a purpose; to maintain; to sustain.
  • (v. t.) To consider; to regard; to esteem; to account; to think; to judge.
  • (v. t.) To bear, carry, or manage; as he holds himself erect; he holds his head high.
  • (n. i.) In general, to keep one's self in a given position or condition; to remain fixed. Hence:
  • (n. i.) Not to more; to halt; to stop;-mostly in the imperative.
  • (n. i.) Not to give way; not to part or become separated; to remain unbroken or unsubdued.
  • (n. i.) Not to fail or be found wanting; to continue; to last; to endure a test or trial; to abide; to persist.
  • (n. i.) Not to fall away, desert, or prove recreant; to remain attached; to cleave;-often with with, to, or for.
  • (n. i.) To restrain one's self; to refrain.
  • (n. i.) To derive right or title; -- generally with of.
  • (n.) The act of holding, as in or with the hands or arms; the manner of holding, whether firm or loose; seizure; grasp; clasp; gripe; possession; -- often used with the verbs take and lay.
  • (n.) The authority or ground to take or keep; claim.
  • (n.) Binding power and influence.
  • (n.) Something that may be grasped; means of support.
  • (n.) A place of confinement; a prison; confinement; custody; guard.
  • (n.) A place of security; a fortified place; a fort; a castle; -- often called a stronghold.
  • (n.) A character [thus /] placed over or under a note or rest, and indicating that it is to be prolonged; -- called also pause, and corona.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Paradoxically, each tax holiday increases the need for the next, because companies start holding ever greater amounts of their tax offshore in the expectation that the next Republican government will announce a new one.
  • (2) Mike Ashley told Lee Charnley that maybe he could talk with me last week but I said: ‘Listen, we cannot say too much so I think it’s better if we wait.’ The message Mike Ashley is sending is quite positive, but it was better to talk after we play Tottenham.” Benítez will ask Ashley for written assurances over his transfer budget, control of transfers and other spheres of club autonomy, but can also reassure the owner that the prospect of managing in the second tier holds few fears for him.
  • (3) Atmaca, who belongs to the Gregorian-Armenian church in Istanbul, said that he nevertheless holds the current pontiff in high regard.
  • (4) In a separate exclusive interview , Alexis Tsipras, the increasingly powerful 37-year-old Greek politician now regarded by many as holding the future of the euro in his hands, told the Guardian that he was determined "to stop the experiment" with austerity policies imposed by Germany.
  • (5) Faisal Abu Shahla, a senior official in Fatah, an organisation responsible for a good deal of repression of its own when it was in power, accuses Hamas of holding 700 political prisoners in Gaza as part of a broad campaign to suppress dissent.
  • (6) 'The only way that child would have drowned in the bath is if you were holding her under the water.'
  • (7) A dozen peers hold ministerial positions and Westminster officials are expecting them to keep the paperwork to run the country flowing and the ministerial seats warm while their elected colleagues fight for votes.
  • (8) Dzeko he has failed to hold down a starting berth since his £27m move in January 2011.
  • (9) A Palestinian delegation was to hold truce talks on Sunday in Cairo with senior US and Egyptian officials, but Israel has said it sees no point in sending its negotiators to the meeting, citing what it says are Hamas breaches of previous agreed truces.
  • (10) The 20-year-old now holds two world records after he broke the 50m best at the European Championships in Berlin during a 2014 season which saw him burst on to the international stage.
  • (11) It’s impossible to understand why they don’t hold a PRB every single day.
  • (12) Broad-based secular comprehensives that draw in families across the class, faith and ethnic spectrum, entirely free of private control, could hold a new appeal.
  • (13) The secrecy worries me if those decisions are being made without giving us the ability to hold them to account,” says Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff.
  • (14) Stepwise depolarizations from the holding potential (-67 to -83 mV) to a potential which varied from -10 to +63 mV resulted in an exponential decline of h from its initial level to a final, non-zero level.
  • (15) The Yamaguchi-gumi is reportedly considering a ban on sending traditional gifts to business associates, and holds weekly meetings to discuss its response to the new ordinances.
  • (16) A breath-holding maneuver was utilized with a high and a low N2O concentration in argon and oxygen.
  • (17) She says he wants his actors to be in a "second state", instinctive, holding nothing back.
  • (18) When I eventually get hold of a human at Uber, I am told the only insurance cover is up to $1m to cover “bodily injury or property damage to third parties where the claim arises out of UberEats and UberRush operations”.
  • (19) This just confirms that the ISC lacks the sufficient independence and expertise to hold the agencies to account.
  • (20) This virus was imported on multiple occasions from a Philippine supplier of cynomolgus macaques as a consequence of an epidemic of acute infections in the foreign holding facility.