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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

vole.

Any of a large number of species of small rodents of the tribes Arvicolini, Ellobiusini, Clethrionomyini, Pliomyini, Phenacomyini and Prometheomyini.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/vəʊl/Received-Pronunciation[vɔʊɫ]Received-Pronunciation/voʊl/General-American[voɫ]General-American
  1. Any of a large number of species of small rodents of the tribes Arvicolini, Ellobiusini, Clethrionomyini, Pliomyini, Phenacomyini and Prometheomyini.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Norn vollj, from Old Norse vǫllr (“field”), from Proto-Germanic *walþuz (“forest”). The Orkney dialectal term vole mouse, lit. “field mouse”, was introduced to general English by George Barry in 1805; John Fleming in 1828 was first to refer to the creature by the epithet vole alone. Displaced earlier names for these species which also classified them as mice, e.g. short-tailed field mouse.

noun
  1. A deal in a card game, écarté, that draws all the tricks.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from French vole.

verb
  1. To win all the tricks by a vole.

    archaic · intransitive
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from French vole.

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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.