"Hold"ing non-installed packages

[The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm>]

Is there any way to tell apt to "hold" a particular package in a non-installed
state?

Having previously encountered problems due to having tried to dist-upgrade
across a long gap, I perform a dist-upgrade to testing on the order of weekly.
When apt-listbugs reports a bug which is important enough for me to want to hold
off on upgrading the package, I use
    echo "$PACKAGE hold" | dpkg --set-selections
to tell dist-upgrade not to upgrade that package for the time being.

However, on occasion I have found that a problematic bug comes not from apt's
desire to upgrade an installed package, but from its desire to install a
specific new package. As such, I would like to be able to tell it to "hold" the
installed version of that single package at "none", until further notice -
thereby excluding it and anything which depends on it from the dist-upgrade
calculations.

However, for this purpose, my usual approach does not work. A non-installed
package is not present in the dpkg selection list, and as such, attempting to
use the above command to change its status results only in a warning message.

I haven't found any alternate approach which seems to work any better. Is there
any established way of achieving this goal?

--
      The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
  - LiveJournal user antonia_tiger