Withheld

How to spell withheld

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce withheld

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does withheld mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of withhold: to have held back, refused to give, or kept from someone.

Withheld in a sentence

• The agency withheld the report until the investigation closed.

• Her employer withheld tax from every paycheque automatically.

Where does withheld come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb withhold, which comes from the Old English wiþhealdan, a compound of wiþ, here meaning 'back' or 'against' rather than the modern 'with', and healdan, meaning 'to hold' or 'to keep'. The original sense was literally 'to hold back', and that core meaning has barely shifted across a thousand years of use. The little prefix wiþ once carried a strong sense of opposition or reversal, which survives in relatives like withdraw and withstand. The past form withheld follows the same irregular vowel change seen in hold becoming held. The spelling trap lives in the join: two h sounds sit side by side, giving the doubled 'thh' cluster of with plus held, which is exactly where writers drop a letter and produce the wrong 'witheld'.

How the word is built

• with- (back, away)
• held (past tense of hold)