Englishhold water
Meaning: To be credible or sound; to stand up to scrutiny; to make sense.
Example: “His alibi doesn't hold water; the store was closed that night.”
Equivalents in other languages
Dutch: hout snijden Literally: To cut wood
Origin: The appeal of this metaphor is that the test it names is genuinely conclusive. Fill a vessel and the answer is immediate, visible, and admits no interpretation — it either retains the water or it does not, a flaw anywhere in the whole surface is enough to fail it, and no amount of sound construction elsewhere compensates. That is precisely the standard an argument is supposed to meet, which is why the phrase became the standard English way of saying a case is sound: a single leak invalidates the container regardless of how well the rest is made. Figurative use is attested from the 1600s, and the idiom is applied to reasoning, excuses, and theories rather than to people.
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