hold back

To stop yourself from showing or expressing a feeling, or to prevent yourself from doing or saying something. When you hold back, you keep something under control rather than letting it out freely.

Type

Separable phrasal verb.

Notes

As a separable phrasal verb, 'hold back' can be split by placing a noun object between 'hold' and 'back' — for example, 'She held back her tears' or 'She held her tears back.' When the object is a pronoun, separation is required: you must say 'She held them back,' never 'She held back them.'

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had rehearsed the conversation a hundred times. She needed to tell her older brother that his di comments had been hurting her for years. When she finally sat across from him at their mother's kitchen table, she felt the familiar tightness in her throat. For a moment she almost held back — smiled, changed the subject, let it go again. B this time she let herself speak. Her voice cr once, then st . Her brother went quiet. Ne of them had expected honesty to feel so much like relief. She had chosen, finally, not to ho the si truth.

Register

Neutral

On the night of April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what would become his final public speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He was exhausted, ill, and had nearly skipped the event altogether. Standing before st sanitation workers — men who had endured violent intimidation for weeks — King spoke about threats on his life and said, with st calm, that he had 'been to the mountaintop' and was no longer afraid to die. Aides present that night later recalled that King w backstage after the speech, overcome by the weight of what he sensed was coming. He did not hold back those pr tears, th for months he had held back his deeper fears from the public platform, pr strength so that others would not lose courage. He was asted the following evening. Y , the episode reveals something true about ho : sometimes what we suppress in front of others costs us greatly in private.

To open up means to start talking honestly about your feelings, thoughts, or personal experiences, especially when this is difficult or you have been keeping them private. It often happens when someone feels safe, trusted, or ready to be vulnerable.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

When 'open up' is used in the emotional sense, it is inseparable — no object is placed between 'open' and 'up'. You say 'She opened up to her sister,' not 'She opened her sister up.' The phrase can be followed by the preposition 'to' plus a person, or used alone without any object at all.

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had worked alongside Marcus for two years without knowing much about him beyond his coffee order. One afternoon, a di team meeting left them both quiet in the break room. She mentioned that she'd been struggling too, and something sh . Marcus set down his cup and, for the first time, began to open up — about the pressure he felt being the only person of color on their floor, about the ex of always seeming fine. Priya listened without interrupting. B the time they returned to their desks, something between them had changed permanently. S , without meaning to, Marcus had begun to op , a it changed how they worked together.

Register

Neutral

In the spring of 1941, the British author C.S. Lewis began exchanging letters with a woman named Joy Davidman, who had written to him from New York about his work on faith and grief. Lewis, known for his s intellect and careful emotional reserve, had spent years constructing arguments rather than sharing personal vulnerability. Y as the correspondence deepened over the following decade, and after Joy moved to England and they eventually married in 1956, something remarkable happened: Lewis, the great rationalist, began genuinely opening up. When Joy died of bone cancer in 1960, he re his raw, unfiltered grief in a private journal later published as 'A Grief Observed' — a book unlike anything he had written before, full of doubt, anger, and deing honesty. He de the silence of God, the feeling of a door slammed shut, the way grief felt physical. It was not a theological argument. In , it was a man opening up. Ev , the episode reminds us that the moded people sometimes find one relationship, one moment of loss, that finally unlocks what they had been carrying alone. It was, in every sense, a decision to op .

To break down means either (1) to stop working properly, as a machine or system does when it fails, or (2) to suddenly lose control of your emotions and start crying. Both senses share the idea of something — a machine or a person — reaching a point where it can no longer hold itself together.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

In its primary senses — stopping functioning or losing emotional control — 'break down' is inseparable: you cannot place an object between the two parts. You say 'she broke down' or 'the engine broke down,' not 'she broke her emotions down.' However, when 'break down' means to divide something into smaller parts or categories, it becomes separable: 'Can you break the report down into sections?' or 'Can you break down the report into sections?' are both correct.

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had held herself together for three weeks after her father's diagnosis — ma appointments, calling relatives, updating insurance forms. She told herself there was no time to feel anything yet. T one Tuesday afternoon, she was washing dishes and a song her father used to hum came on the radio. She turned off the tap, sat down on the kitchen floor, and completely br . Her roommate found her there twenty minutes later and simply sat beside her, saying nothing. So , Priya thought, you don't ch when the walls come down — they choose for you. It was, in its own q way, a ne collapse.

Register

Neutral

On the night of June 4, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons and de one of the most coial speeches of the twentieth century — the 'We shall fight on the beaches' address. What many people do not know is what happened immediately afterward. Churchill walked off the floor of the House, turned to a colleague, and reportedly mu , 'And we'll fight them with the butt ends of broken bottles, because that's bloody well all we've got.' According to close aides, in pr moments during those first desperate months of the war — with France collapsing, Dunkirk barely survived, and invasion seemingly imminent — Churchill did, on at least one occasion, break down in private, weeping openly. He had built a public image of granite-like resolve, b the weight of responsibility for millions of lives took its toll in rooms where no cameras watched. That pr fracture, those moments of breaking down, may have made his public composure more genuine, not less. E the strongest systems — human or mechanical — can reach a point where they simply br .

To continue doing something without stopping, especially after a problem, interruption, or setback. It suggests persistence and the determination to keep going despite difficulties.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Carry on" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the verb and particle cannot be split by an object. You must say "carry on with the journey," never "carry the journey on." When a pronoun or noun follows, it is introduced with the preposition "with": for example, "She carried on with her work" rather than placing the object between the two words.

Conjugation

Narrative

Marco had been cycling across Spain for eleven days when his rear derailleur snapped outside a small village near Burgos. He pushed his bike to a roadside café, or a coffee, and sat staring at the map. A local mechanic patched it together with a spare part that wasn't quite right — the gears skipped on every hill. Marco knew the fix wouldn't last. B Santiago de Compostela was only four days away. He tightened his w helmet, paid for the coffee, and decided to ca , taking the s hills slowly, st on the pedals where he had to. Ev , he never once considered turning back.

Register

Neutral

In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set sail from London aboard the Endurance. By January 1915, the ship was tr in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. For ten months the crew drifted, locked in ice, watching the ship slowly being crushed. When the Endurance finally sank in November 1915, Shackleton and his twenty-seven men were stranded on the ice with three lifeboats and dwindling supplies. Rahan surrender to despair, Shackleton organized daily routines, maintained morale, and led the men on a ha 800-mile open-sea voyage to South Georgia Island — na by sextant, enduring hurce winds — to reach a whaling station and summon rescue. Every si crew member survived. What made the difference was Shackleton's refusal to stop: when each plan failed, he fo a new one. S , the expedition became one of history's most extraordinary examples of what it means to ca in the face of total, sustained catastrophe.