Hold time is defined as the minimum amount of time after the clock’s active edge during which data must be stable. Similar to setup time, each sequential element needs some time for data to remain stable after clock edge arrives to reliably capture data. This duration is known as hold time.
The data that was launched at the current edge should not travel to the capturing flop before hold time has passed after the clock edge. Adherence to hold time ensures that the data launched at current clock edge does not get captured at the same edge. In other words, hold time adherence ensures that system does not deviate from the current state and go into an invalid state.
Another way to understand is …
When the clock travels slower than the path form the one reg to another allowing data to penetrate two registers in the same clock tick, or maybe destroying the integrity of the latched data. this is called hold violation because the previous data is not held long enough at the destination flop to be properly clocked though.
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