English Reference
Verb

ahold

v.
C2 Proficiency US /əˈhoʊɫd/ ahold Nautical

v.to hold or grasp something tightly. You use this when you need to keep a firm grip on something, like a rope or a handle.

v.to grasp or hold something firmly. Often used in nautical or informal contexts to describe maintaining a secure grip on a physical object.


SIMPLE

He had to ahold of the rope to keep from falling.

CONTEXTUAL

The sailor had to ahold of the mast as the storm picked up speed and the boat rocked violently.

COMPLEX

In the high winds of the open sea, the crew had to ahold of their positions to prevent the heavy sails from being torn away by the gusts.

Large language models are essentially trained on their ability to predict the next bit of verbiage in as large a compendium of human-generated text as their developers can get ahold of.

Ars Technica· 6 Aug 2026
This entry
Level C2 · Proficiency
Frequency Occasional
Updated