upholding

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of uphold.

   The appeals court is upholding the lower ruling for now.

   Upholding these standards has cost the company several contracts.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After a form of be it is the progressive verb (the court is upholding the ruling). At the head of a clause it is a gerund that still takes a direct object (upholding these standards). Most uses carry uphold's sense of confirming something that has been questioned rather than the literal lifting on high. Once it takes of or a plural, it has become the noun for the act itself.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act by which something is kept in force or supported.

   The court's upholding of the contract settled the dispute between the two firms.

   Many credited the community's upholding of its founding values for its lasting unity.

   Similaraffirmation, confirmation, preservation, maintenance, support

   Oppositereversal, rejection, abandonment

   Note

   A countable noun, unlike the gerund: it takes a plural, upholdings, and its object follows of. It sits comfortably in legal and political writing, where a court's upholding of a law is the opposite of striking it down. Tom S. Clark's The Limits of Judicial Independence (2010) sets judicial upholdings against judicial invalidations of federal legislation. When the object follows directly, without of, use the verb form instead.

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