hold vs shift

hold

noun
  • An act or instance of holding. 

  • The property of maintaining the shape of styled hair. 

  • The part of an object one is intended to grasp, or anything one can use for grasping with hands or feet. 

  • Power over someone or something. 

  • A place where animals are held for safety 

  • Keep a firm hold on the handlebars. 

  • A position or grip used to control the opponent. 

  • The wager amount, the total hold. 

  • A fruit machine feature allowing one or more of the reels to remain fixed while the others spin. 

  • The cargo area of a ship or aircraft (often holds or cargo hold). 

  • The ability to persist. 

  • An exercise involving holding a position for a set time 

  • An order that something is to be reserved or delayed, limiting or preventing how it can be dealt with. 

  • Something reserved or kept. 

  • A grasp or grip. 

  • The percentage the house wins on a gamble, the house or bookmaker's hold. 

  • As of Monday night the total Melbourne Cup hold was $848,015 

  • The House Hold on the game is 10,000, this is the amount of decision or risk the house wishes to assume. 

  • The queueing system on telephones and similar communication systems which maintains a connection when all lines are busy. 

  • A statistic awarded to a relief pitcher who is not still pitching at the end of the game and who records at least one out and maintains a lead for his team. 

  • An instance of holding one's service game, as opposed to being broken. 

  • A region of airspace reserved for aircraft being kept in a holding pattern. 

verb
  • To detain. 

  • To take place, to occur. 

  • In a food or drink order at an informal restaurant etc., requesting that a component normally included in that order be omitted. 

  • To have and keep possession of something. 

  • Not to move; to halt; to stop. 

  • To be or remain valid; to apply (usually in the third person). 

  • To contain or store. 

  • To be in possession of illicit drugs for sale. 

  • To organise an event or meeting (usually in passive voice). 

  • To accept, as an opinion; to be the adherent of, openly or privately; to persist in, as a purpose; to maintain; to sustain. 

  • To win one's own service game. 

  • To cause to wait or delay. 

  • To maintain in being or action; to carry on; to prosecute, as a course of conduct or an argument; to continue; to sustain. 

  • To bind (someone) to a consequence of his or her actions. 

  • To maintain, to consider, to opine. 

  • To grasp or grip. 

  • To reserve. 

  • To bear, carry, or manage. 

  • To keep oneself in a particular state. 

  • To remain continent; to control an excretory bodily function. 

  • Not to give way; not to part or become separated; to remain unbroken or unsubdued. 

  • To impose restraint upon; to limit in motion or action; to bind legally or morally; to confine; to restrain. 

shift

noun
  • An act of shifting; a slight movement or change. 

  • In violin-playing, any position of the left hand except that nearest the nut. 

  • A change of workers, now specifically a set group of workers or period of working time. 

  • An instance of the use of such a code or character. 

  • The act of kissing passionately. 

  • A type of women's undergarment of dress length worn under dresses or skirts, a slip or chemise. 

  • A bit shift. 

  • The extent, or arrangement, of the overlapping of plank, brick, stones, etc., that are placed in courses so as to break joints. 

  • A breaking off and dislocation of a seam; a fault. 

  • A mutation in which the DNA or RNA from two different sources (such as viruses or bacteria) combine. 

  • The gear mechanism in a motor vehicle. 

  • A period of time in which one's consciousness resides in another reality, usually achieved through meditation or other means. 

  • A control code or character used to change between different character sets. 

  • An infield shift. 

  • A simple straight-hanging, loose-fitting dress. 

verb
  • To change position. 

  • To manipulate a binary number by moving all of its digits left or right; compare rotate. 

  • To move the keys of a typewriter over in order to type capital letters and special characters. 

  • In violin-playing, to move the left hand from its original position next to the nut. 

  • To dispose of. 

  • To practice indirect or evasive methods. 

  • To remove the first value from an array. 

  • To change gears (in a car). 

  • To hurry; to move quickly. 

  • To change the reality one's consciousness resides in through meditation or other means. 

  • To move from one place to another; to redistribute. 

  • To change in form or character; switch. 

  • To change residence; to leave and live elsewhere. 

  • To switch to a character entry mode for capital letters and special characters. 

  • To engage in sexual petting. 

How often have the words hold and shift occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )