To wait; or to keep going despite difficulties; or to grip something tightly.
To hold on means to wait for a short time, or to continue doing something even though it is hard or painful. It describes both a brief pause and the act of persisting through difficulty.
Type
Inseparable
Collocations
hold on tight — grip something firmly
hold on a moment — a common way to ask someone to wait
hold on to hope — maintain something abstract, like hope or belief
⚠️ Watch out
As a stand-alone imperative it usually means 'wait', but with 'to' it means maintaining a grip on something physical or abstract — don't drop 'to' when it's needed.
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In the winter of 1914–1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Rather than abandon his men, Shackleton made a decision that defined his leadership: they would hold their position, wait out the ice, and keep morale alive for as long as it took. For ten months the crew lived on the drifting, slowly crushing ship. When Endurance finally sank in November 1915, Shackleton led all 27 men across ice floes and open ocean in a {{salvaged|verb-various-tenses|medium}} lifeboat to reach the {{uninhabited|adjective|hard}} Elephant Island — and then sailed a further 800 miles to South Georgia to get help. Not one man died. What made survival possible was the daily, {{unglamorous|adjective|medium}} discipline of continuing when quitting seemed rational. Historians of leadership still study those months as a masterclass in endurance. {{So|connective|easy}}, the crew held on not {{because|connective|easy}} rescue was certain, {{but because|connective|hard}} Shackleton {{persuaded|verb-various-tenses|easy}} them that {{holding on|phrasal-verb|medium}} was the only real option they had.
To persevere or persist means to keep going despite difficulties, setbacks or obstacles, continuing with a task or effort even when it becomes challenging. These verbs convey determined, sustained effort in the face of adversity.
Type
Intransitive verb (persevere / persist are both intransitive; they do not take a direct object)
Collocations
persevere with something — used when continuing a specific task or plan (e.g. persevere with the project)
persist through something — used when pushing through a difficult period or condition (e.g. persist through setbacks)
persevere despite something — highlights the obstacle being overcome (e.g. persevere despite the criticism)
continue to persist — emphasises ongoing, sustained effort over time
persevere in the face of something — formal-neutral phrase indicating adversity (e.g. persevere in the face of opposition)
⚠️ Watch out
Both verbs are intransitive, so avoid using them with a direct object — say 'she persevered with the work,' not 'she persevered the work.' Note also that 'persist' can carry a slightly negative connotation in some contexts (e.g. 'the problem persists'), so ensure the surrounding context makes it clear you are referring to human determination rather than an ongoing problem.
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Marcus had been training for the half-marathon for four months when a knee injury set him back by three weeks. His physiotherapist told him he could return to light running, but progress would be slow. He chose to persevere, shortening his sessions and focusing on strength work in the meantime. There were mornings when he considered withdrawing from the race altogether. But he continued to persist, telling himself that finishing mattered more than finishing fast. On race day, Marcus crossed the line in two hours and eleven minutes — not his target time, but, to him, the most meaningful result he had ever achieved.
The First-Generation Student Who Refused to Quit
When Amara Diallo enrolled in her economics degree three years ago, she had no family blueprint to follow. Neither of her parents had attended university, and the academic culture — the seminars, the reading lists, the unspoken social codes — felt like a foreign language she had not been given the chance to learn.
By the end of her first semester, Amara was seriously considering withdrawing. Her grades were lower than she had expected, she struggled to engage in tutorials and she felt, as she puts it, 'like everyone else already knew the rules of a game I had only just discovered existed.'
But she chose to persevere. She sought out a student mentor, restructured her study habits and began attending office hours regularly — something she had previously found intimidating.
The shift was gradual. Confidence came not in a single moment but in accumulated small wins: a paper graded well, a seminar contribution that sparked discussion, a professor who remembered her name.
Now in her final year, Amara is on track for a first-class degree. She credits her outcome not to sudden brilliance but to a deliberate decision to persist through the early months when everything felt uncertain.
'I just kept showing up,' she says. 'That was really all it took.'
In work English, 'maintain / endure' means to keep functioning, persisting, or progressing through a period of difficulty or pressure, without giving up. It describes the professional capacity to sustain effort and continue operating despite setbacks or challenging conditions.
Type
Transitive verb (maintain) / intransitive or transitive verb (endure) — both function as formal verb phrases in professional contexts
Collocations
maintain performance — used when sustaining output levels under pressure
maintain commitments — used in contractual or client-facing contexts
endure disruption — describes persisting through operational difficulties
endure uncertainty — common in change management and restructuring contexts
maintain standards — used when upholding quality despite challenging conditions
⚠️ Watch out
Avoid using 'endure' alone in positive performance contexts, as it carries a stronger connotation of suffering that may sound overly dramatic in neutral business reporting — pair it with a clear cause of difficulty. 'Maintain' is the safer, more versatile choice in formal documents when the emphasis is on continuity rather than hardship.
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When the merger announcement created widespread uncertainty across the firm, the compliance department faced a particularly difficult period. Deadlines remained unchanged, yet half the team was reassigned to integration workstreams. Compliance Director Sara Nwosu knew the only path forward was to maintain the department's output and endure the disruption until resourcing was restored. She redistributed responsibilities calmly, communicated expectations clearly and checked in with her team regularly. Slowly, confidence returned. By the time the merger concluded, the department had managed to maintain its full regulatory reporting schedule without a single missed submission. The experience defined the team's identity for years to come.
The autumn quarter had been, by any measure, one of the most testing periods in Vantage Consulting's recent history. A key technology platform had failed during its rollout phase, a major client had temporarily paused its contract pending an internal review, and two senior project leads had departed within the same month. The management team faced a genuine choice: reduce scope, delay deliverables and reset expectations across the board, or find a way to maintain momentum and see the quarter through on its own terms.
They chose the latter. Resources were reallocated, working groups were restructured and a clear communication plan was issued to all stakeholders within forty-eight hours. Remaining staff were asked to endure a period of increased workload with the firm commitment that additional support would follow in the new quarter. That commitment was honoured. By the end of November, the platform had been stabilised, the paused client had resumed its engagement and two internal promotions had been confirmed. What had threatened to define the quarter as a failure had instead become the foundation for one of the firm's strongest periods of team cohesion and professional credibility.
In academic English, 'sustain' or 'persevere' means to continue making effort and maintaining progress in the face of significant obstacles or setbacks. These verbs are used to describe the deliberate, disciplined continuation of a course of action despite adversity.
Type
Intransitive verb (persevere) / transitive or intransitive verb (sustain)
Collocations
persevere through adversity — used to describe continued effort despite specific obstacles
sustain momentum — refers to maintaining forward progress over time
persevere in the face of — formal construction preceding a named challenge
sustain scholarly engagement — describes ongoing intellectual commitment in academic contexts
persevere despite setbacks — common in research narratives highlighting resilience
⚠️ Watch out
Writers should note that 'persevere' is strictly intransitive and cannot take a direct object — one perseveres through or in something, never perseveres something. 'Sustain,' by contrast, is often transitive and requires an object; writing 'the researchers sustained' without an object may read as incomplete in formal academic prose.
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Dr Yemi Adebayo had spent three years investigating climate adaptation strategies in coastal West Africa. When her primary field site was rendered inaccessible due to political instability, many colleagues assumed she would abandon the project. Instead, she chose to persevere, redesigning her methodology around satellite data and remote interviews. The transition was technically demanding and emotionally exhausting. Her department offered limited support, and publication timelines stretched well beyond initial projections. Yet she continued to sustain her commitment to the research, driven by the conviction that the communities she studied deserved rigorous academic attention. The resulting monograph became one of the most cited works in her field that decade.
The question of why some scholars flourish under conditions of prolonged difficulty while others disengage entirely has occupied educational psychologists and higher education researchers for several decades. Early explanations focused predominantly on fixed personality traits — the idea that certain individuals were simply constitutionally equipped to sustain effort where others were not. This deterministic framing, however, has been substantially complicated by more recent empirical work, which positions academic resilience as a dynamic and context-sensitive phenomenon rather than a static personal attribute.
Central to this revised understanding is the concept of structured agency: the degree to which researchers are able to exercise meaningful control over their working conditions, even within highly constrained institutional environments. Studies suggest that scholars who perceive their environment as at least partially responsive to their actions are significantly more likely to persevere through extended periods of difficulty, including funding gaps, negative peer review, and supervisory transitions. This insight has important consequences for how universities design support infrastructure and how academic culture frames the experience of struggle — not as evidence of inadequacy, but as an ordinary and navigable feature of serious intellectual work.