holdfastness

H4O1L1D2F4A1S1T1N1E1S1S1

noun

The ability to serve as a secure basis for attachment.

Scrabble 19
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Meanings

nounholdfastness (uncountable)
  1. uncountableThe ability to serve as a secure basis for attachment.

    […] a healthy copartnership of American enterprise and enthusiasm, and English solidity and holdfastness.

    1865, Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent, page 206
    1 more example

    […] the Furies of hate and many other allegorical figures of later times are potencies of a kind, but they are without affirmative subsistency and holdfastness, unfavourable to ideal representation, […]

    1962, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henry Paolucci, Hegel on Tragedy, page 135

Origin

From holdfast + -ness.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

holdfastness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/holdfastness

MLA

“holdfastness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/holdfastness. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “holdfastness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/holdfastness.

Source: holdfastness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.