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I'm seeing the Coach Carter movie and there is a phrase that I didn't understand. Context:

Reporter is talking

St.Francis High School basketball phenomen. Ty Crane, who they recruited just last year is widely held as the next LeBron James.

What does widely held mean here?

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    US sports reporters/commentators aren't widely held to be exemplars of current "standard" English, as this chart shows
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 21:03
  • @FumbleFingers What do you mean "standard" English? Everyone understand what they say...
    – Dmitrii Bundin
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 8:54
  • As my linked chart shows, your cited usage (with held as rather than held to be) is effectively "non-standard". Obviously even non-native speakers can easily understand the intended meaning, assuming they already know to hold [some assertion] = to believe and promote [that assertion], But syntactically it's not the way the vast majority of [careful] native speakers would put it.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 15:37

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See http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hold, definition 8: "Hold" can mean to assert, affirm, or regard in a certain way. That is, if you say, "I hold Bob to be an honest man", that means that you believe he is honest or you consider him to be honest.

If something is "widely held", that means that many people affirm or believe it.

So to say that this person is "widely held to be a great basketball player" would mean that many people consider him to be a great basketball player.

Lebron James is a well-known basketball player. So "widely held to be the next LeBron James" means "many people believe that he will become as great a basketball player as LeBron James".

(Or maybe in context they're talking about some other aspect of LeBron James. I'm not a sports fan and I don't know anything about the man, so if he's also famous for his charitable work or singing ability or whatever, it's possible that that's what they're talking about. But from the fact that the paragraph is talking about basketball, I'd guess not.)

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  • Could we just say Ty Crane, who they recruited just last year is held as the next LeBron James. without widely. I mean would it have the same meaning? Or widely adds some emphasize (hold is weaker than widely hold in that sense).
    – Dmitrii Bundin
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 19:50
  • @DmitryFucintv "Widely held" gives the impression that more people are of that opinion as compared to just "held".
    – Michael McGriff
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 20:43
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    @Dmitry: A is widely held to be B is pretty much a "fixed expression". In fact, if you drop widely it would probably be understood to mean held by everyone, but that's secondary to the fact that very often it would just appear "odd".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 21:09
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    Jay, if I say "Newton is held to be the greatest scientist who ever lived" surely you'd take the "missing holders" to mean everyone [whose opinion is important in this context]. It seems to me omitting widely there is inherently a more grandiose/emphatic way of putting it.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 1:56
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    @FumbleFingers If I read "Newton is held to be ..." without any context specifying who is doing the holding, I suppose I'd take that to mean that there's some general consensus. In real life I'd doubt that it means literally everyone agrees, or you wouldn't say "held", you'd just say "is". But whatever. I don't think we have a serious disagreement here.
    – Jay
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 13:07

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