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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hole.

A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/həʊl/Received-Pronunciation[hɔʊɫ]Received-Pronunciation/hɒl//hɐʉl/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure.

    I made a blind hole in the wall for a peg.  I dug a hole and planted a tree in it.
  2. An opening that goes all the way through a solid body, a fabric, etc.; a perforation; a rent.

    There’s a hole in my shoe.  Her stocking has a hole in it.
  3. In games. A subsurface standard-size hole, also called cup, hitting the ball into which is the object of play. Each hole, of which there are usually eighteen as the standard on a full course, is located on a prepared surface, called the green, of a particular type grass.

  4. In games. The part of a game in which a player attempts to hit the ball into one of the holes.

    I played 18 holes yesterday.  The second hole today cost me three strokes over par.
  5. In games. The rear portion of the defensive team between the shortstop and the third baseman.

    The shortstop ranged deep into the hole to make the stop.
  6. In games. A square on the board, with some positional significance, that a player does not, and cannot in the future, control with a friendly pawn.

  7. In games. A card (also called a hole card) dealt face down thus unknown to all but its holder; the status in which such a card is.

  8. In games. In the game of fives, part of the floor of the court between the step and the pepperbox.

  9. An excavation pit or trench.

    slang
  10. A weakness; a flaw or ambiguity.

    figuratively
    I have found a hole in your argument.
  11. In semiconductors, a lack of an electron in an occupied band behaving like a positively charged particle.

  12. A security vulnerability in software which can be taken advantage of by an exploit.

  13. Any bodily orifice. A person's mouth.

    derogatory · slang · vulgar
    Just shut your hole!
  14. Any bodily orifice. The anus.

    slang · vulgar
  15. Any bodily orifice. The vagina.

    slang · vulgar
  16. A woman.

    derogatory
  17. Solitary confinement, a high-security prison cell often used as punishment.

    informal · with-definite-article
  18. An undesirable place to live or visit.

    slang
    His apartment is a hole!
  19. Difficulty, in particular, debt.

    figuratively
    If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
  20. A chordless cycle in a graph.

  21. A passing loop; a siding provided for trains traveling in opposite directions on a single-track line to pass each other.

    slang
    We’re supposed to take the hole at Cronk and wait for the Limited to pass.
  22. A mountain valley.

    Canada · US · historical
    Jackson Hole
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hulaz Proto-Germanic *hulą Proto-West Germanic *hol Old English hol Middle English hole English hole Inherited from Middle English hole, hol, from Old English hol (“orifice, hollow place, cavity”), from Proto-West Germanic *hol (“hole”), from Proto-Germanic *hulą (“hollow space, cavity”), noun derivative of Proto-Germanic *hulaz (“hollow”), which is of uncertain ultimate origin. Related to hollow. Cognate with Dutch, Faroese, and Icelandic hol (“hole”), Danish hul (“hole”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Norn hola (“hole”), Norwegian Bokmål hol (“depression, hole, cavern”), Swedish hål (“hole”), French houle (“swell of water”). Compare unrelated Finnish kolo (“hole”).

verb/həʊl/Received-Pronunciation[hɔʊɫ]Received-Pronunciation/hɒl//hɐʉl/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. To make holes in (an object or surface).

    transitive
    Shrapnel holed the ship's hull.
  2. To destroy.

    broadly · transitive
    She completely holed the argument.
  3. To go into a hole.

    intransitive
  4. To drive into a hole, as an animal, or a billiard ball or golf ball.

    transitive
    Woods holed a standard three foot putt
  5. To cut, dig, or bore a hole or holes in.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hulaz Proto-Germanic *hulą Proto-West Germanic *hol Old English hol Middle English hole English hole Inherited from Middle English hole, hol, from Old English hol (“orifice, hollow place, cavity”), from Proto-West Germanic *hol (“hole”), from Proto-Germanic *hulą (“hollow space, cavity”), noun derivative of Proto-Germanic *hulaz (“hollow”), which is of uncertain ultimate origin. Related to hollow. Cognate with Dutch, Faroese, and Icelandic hol (“hole”), Danish hul (“hole”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Norn hola (“hole”), Norwegian Bokmål hol (“depression, hole, cavern”), Swedish hål (“hole”), French houle (“swell of water”). Compare unrelated Finnish kolo (“hole”).

adj/həʊl/Received-Pronunciation[hɔʊɫ]Received-Pronunciation/hɒl//hɐʉl/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. Obsolete spelling of whole.

    alt-of · obsolete
  2. Misspelling of whole.

    alt-of · misspelling
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.