Making laws
Senate hold
A senator's private notice to their leader that they will object to taking up a bill or nomination. Not in the rules, but powerful because Senate business runs on unanimous consent.
In full
A hold is nothing more than a warning that unanimous consent will be refused, which forces leadership to spend days of floor time on cloture instead. Holds have been used to extract concessions on unrelated matters and to stall nominations indefinitely. Rules changes now require a hold to be disclosed in the Congressional Record after a few days, but its practical descendants persist.
Also written as: hold, holds
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A plain-language explanation for civic education, not legal advice. When in doubt, the official source named above controls.