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Monday October 11, 2010

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beholden [bih-HOHL-duhn]

adjective

1. Obliged; bound in gratitude; indebted.

• Many if not most financial-services companies require customers to agree to settle disputes out of court, denying them the right to a legal hearing or to join with other consumers in a class-action lawsuit. Because many professional arbitrators are financially beholden to the companies that routinely bring them business -- i.e., banks -- this makes for a decidedly uneven playing field.
  David Lazarus, "Consumer czar must get tough with banks", Los Angeles Times, Oct 1, 2010
• Local governments in Florida have, because of their continued approvals of nearly all development, encouraged this dangerous cycle. Local elected officials, beholden to large developers due to campaign contributions, simply cannot say "no" to new developments no matter how bad they are.
  "PUBLIC DESERVES A SAY IN DEVELOPMENT", St. Petersburg Times, Sep 24, 2010
• However, I was tight and clean, and in better plight than he had seen me in a great while, and he looked extremely pleased to see me so; for, he said, I looked so disconsolate and so afflicted before, that it grieved him to see me; and he bade me pluck up a good heart, for he hoped to put me in a condition to live in the world, and be beholden to nobody.
  Daniel Defoe (1659 - 1661) An English writer and journalist. The Fortunate Mistress (1904)

Origin of the Word

Beholden, approximately 1350, derives Old English behealden, past participle of behealdan, "to guard," from be- , intens. prefix + healden , "to hold."