"hold with the hare and run with the hounds" meaning in All languages combined

See hold with the hare and run with the hounds on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: en-au-hold with the hare and run with the hounds.ogg Forms: holds with the hare and runs with the hounds [present, singular, third-person], holding with the hare and running with the hounds [participle, present], held with the hare and ran with the hounds [past], held with the hare and run with the hounds [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|hold<,,held> with the hare and run<,,ran,run> with the hounds}} hold with the hare and run with the hounds (third-person singular simple present holds with the hare and runs with the hounds, present participle holding with the hare and running with the hounds, simple past held with the hare and ran with the hounds, past participle held with the hare and run with the hounds)
  1. (idiomatic, dated) To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite. Tags: dated, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-hold_with_the_hare_and_run_with_the_hounds-en-verb-vPIYDqhd Categories (other): English coordinated pairs, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English coordinated pairs: 53 47 Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 69 31 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 69 31 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 70 30
  2. (idiomatic, dated) To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy. Tags: dated, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-hold_with_the_hare_and_run_with_the_hounds-en-verb-HN~B59rR Categories (other): English coordinated pairs Disambiguation of English coordinated pairs: 53 47

Inflected forms

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      "form": "holds with the hare and runs with the hounds",
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        "third-person"
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      "form": "holding with the hare and running with the hounds",
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    {
      "form": "held with the hare and ran with the hounds",
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      "form": "held with the hare and run with the hounds",
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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          "_dis": "53 47",
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          "type": "example"
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          "ref": "1571, Arthur Golding, “Epistle Dedicatorie”, in The Psalms of David and others. With M. John Calvin Commentaries, page xxix (29):",
          "text": "[…] Laddes that canne holde with the Hare and hunt with the Hounde, and (as the Scripture termeth them) time-seruers and menpleasers.",
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          "ref": "1874, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, An Earnest Warning on Lukewarmness, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2025:",
          "text": "Thousands try to hold with the hare and run with the hounds, they are for God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, truth and error, and so are “neither hot nor cold.”",
          "type": "quote"
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          "bold_text_offsets": [
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          "ref": "1967 March, Robert Brainard Pearsall, “The Vendible Values of Housman's Soldiery”, in PMLA, volume 82, number 1, Modern Language Association of America, →DOI, pages 85–90:",
          "text": "Thus Housman's uniformed creations move crookedly; they run with the hare and run with the hounds, and their “meaning” is uncertain.",
          "type": "quote"
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      "glosses": [
        "To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite."
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, dated) To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite."
      ],
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          "text": "Julianna needs to be careful if she keeps holding with the hare and running with the hounds; she might wind up making enemies of both labor and management.",
          "type": "example"
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          "ref": "1676, John Bunyan, The Strait Gate, or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven, London: Francis Smith, page 144:",
          "text": "Eleventhly, There is yet another profeſſor ; and he is for God and for Baal too, he can be any thing, for any company : he can throw ſtones with both hands, […] he'll hold with the hair, and run with the hound, he carries fire in one hand, and water i'th t'other^([sic – meaning in th'other]) ; […]",
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          "ref": "1871 October, George Webbe Dasent, “Three to One”, in M[ary] E[lizabeth] Braddon, editor, Belgravia, London: Willmer & Rogers, chapter iv. the invitations are accepted., page 406:",
          "text": "How happy is the man who knows really how to hold with the hare and run with the hounds! in other words, to be equally agreeable to both husband and wife.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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        "To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy."
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        "(idiomatic, dated) To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy."
      ],
      "tags": [
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    }
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}
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      "form": "holding with the hare and running with the hounds",
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    },
    {
      "form": "held with the hare and ran with the hounds",
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    {
      "form": "held with the hare and run with the hounds",
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        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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          "ref": "1571, Arthur Golding, “Epistle Dedicatorie”, in The Psalms of David and others. With M. John Calvin Commentaries, page xxix (29):",
          "text": "[…] Laddes that canne holde with the Hare and hunt with the Hounde, and (as the Scripture termeth them) time-seruers and menpleasers.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              14,
              59
            ]
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          "text": "Thousands try to hold with the hare and run with the hounds, they are for God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, truth and error, and so are “neither hot nor cold.”",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              56,
              97
            ]
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          "ref": "1967 March, Robert Brainard Pearsall, “The Vendible Values of Housman's Soldiery”, in PMLA, volume 82, number 1, Modern Language Association of America, →DOI, pages 85–90:",
          "text": "Thus Housman's uniformed creations move crookedly; they run with the hare and run with the hounds, and their “meaning” is uncertain.",
          "type": "quote"
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        "To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite."
      ],
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        "(idiomatic, dated) To oppose an action or behavior and yet engage in the same action or behavior; to be a hypocrite."
      ],
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        "idiomatic"
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              42,
              91
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          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              167,
              209
            ]
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          "ref": "1676, John Bunyan, The Strait Gate, or, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven, London: Francis Smith, page 144:",
          "text": "Eleventhly, There is yet another profeſſor ; and he is for God and for Baal too, he can be any thing, for any company : he can throw ſtones with both hands, […] he'll hold with the hair, and run with the hound, he carries fire in one hand, and water i'th t'other^([sic – meaning in th'other]) ; […]",
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            ]
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          "ref": "1871 October, George Webbe Dasent, “Three to One”, in M[ary] E[lizabeth] Braddon, editor, Belgravia, London: Willmer & Rogers, chapter iv. the invitations are accepted., page 406:",
          "text": "How happy is the man who knows really how to hold with the hare and run with the hounds! in other words, to be equally agreeable to both husband and wife.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy."
      ],
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        "(idiomatic, dated) To remain neutral by attempting to placate two factions or both sides of a controversy."
      ],
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        "dated",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
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  "word": "hold with the hare and run with the hounds"
}

Download raw JSONL data for hold with the hare and run with the hounds meaning in All languages combined (5.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-08-04 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-08-02 using wiktextract (a681f8a and 3c020d2). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.