Hold

(Anglo-Saxon, heald-an, to hold.)

He is not fit to hold the candle to him. He is very inferior. The allusion is to link-boys who held candles in theatres and other places of night amusement.

“Others say that Mr. Handel

To Bonocini canʹt hold a candle.”

Swift.

To cry hold. Stop. The allusion is to the old military tournaments; when the umpires wished to stop the contest they cried out “Hold!”

“Lay on Macduff,

And damnʹd be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!ʹ”

Shakespeare: Macbeth, v. 8.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.