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hole

[hohl]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

an opening through something; gap; aperture: a hole in the roof; a hole in my sock.

a hollow place in a solid body or mass; a cavity: a hole in the ground.

the excavated habitation of an animal; burrow.

a small, dingy, or shabby place: I couldn't live in a hole like that.

a place of solitary confinement; dungeon.

EXPAND

an embarrassing position or predicament: to find oneself in a hole.

a cove or small harbor.

a fault or flaw: They found serious holes in his reasoning.

a deep, still place in a stream: a swimming hole.

10.

Sports.

a small cavity, into which a marble, ball, or the like is to be played.

a score made by so playing.

11.

Golf.

the circular opening in a green into which the ball is to be played.

a part of a golf course from a tee to the hole corresponding to it, including fairway, rough, and hazards.

the number of strokes taken to hit the ball from a tee into the hole corresponding to it.

12.

Informal. opening; slot: The radio program was scheduled for the p.m. hole. We need an experienced person to fill a hole in our accounting department.

13.

Metalworking. (in wire drawing) one reduction of a section.

14.

Electronics. a mobile vacancy in the electronic structure of a semiconductor that acts as a positive charge carrier and has equivalent mass.

15.

Aeronautics. an air pocket that causes a plane or other aircraft to drop suddenly.

COLLAPSE

verb (used with object)

16.

to make a hole or holes in.

17.

to put or drive into a hole.

18.

Golf. to hit the ball into (a hole).

19.

to bore (a tunnel, passage, etc.).

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Hole is one of our favorite verbs.

So is yaff. Does it mean:

to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.

to bark; yelp.

LEARN MORE FUN, UNUSUAL VERBS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

verb (used without object)

20.

to make a hole or holes.

Verb phrases

21.

hole out, Golf. to strike the ball into a hole: He holed out in five, one over par.

22.

hole up,

to go into a hole; retire for the winter, as a hibernating animal.

to hide, as from pursuers, the police, etc.: The police think the bank robbers are holed up in Chicago.

Idioms

23.

burn a hole in one's pocket, to urge one to spend money quickly: His inheritance was burning a hole in his pocket.

24.

hole in the wall, a small or confining place, especially one that is dingy, shabby, or out-of-the-way: Their first shop was a real hole in the wall.

25.

in a

the hole,

in debt; in straitened circumstances: After Christmas I am always in the hole for at least a month.

Baseball, Softball. pitching or batting with the count of balls or balls and strikes to one's disadvantage, especially batting with a count of two strikes and one ball or none.

Stud Poker. being the card or one of the cards dealt face down in the first round: a king in the hole.

26.

make a hole in, to take a large part of: A large bill from the dentist made a hole in her savings.

27.

pick a hole

holes in, to find a fault or flaw in: As soon as I presented my argument, he began to pick holes in it. Also, poke a hole

holes in.

Origin:
before 900; Middle English; Old English hol hole, cave, orig. neuter of hol (adj.) hollow; cognate with German hohl hollow

Related forms

hole·less, adjective

hol·ey, adjective

Can be confused: 1. hole, whole (see synonym note at the current entry; see synonym note at whole); 2. holey, holy, wholly.

Synonyms
1, 2. pit, hollow, concavity. Hole, cavity, excavation refer to a hollow place in anything. Hole is the common word for this idea: a hole in turf. Cavity is a more formal or scientific term for a hollow within the body or in a substance, whether with or without a passage outward: a cavity in a tooth; the cranial cavity. An excavation is an extended hole made by digging out or removing material: an excavation before the construction of a building. 3. den, cave; lair, retreat. 4. hovel, shack.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To hole

Example Sentences

We've tumbled far, far down the organic rabbit hole.

And yet another paper had gotten lost in an academic black hole.

In some ways, you can think of the universe as a black hole turned inside out.

EXPAND

We've tumbled far, far down the organic rabbit hole.

And yet another paper had gotten lost in an academic black hole.

In some ways, you can think of the universe as a black hole turned inside out.

Communication with guards was done through a small feeding hole.

Dig a hole in the soil deep enough to hold the plastic bucket.

Scientists say they have possible evidence, for the first time, of energy being extracted from around a black hole.

When you hit a hole in one, you traditionally have to buy drinks for everyone at your club.

The news hole of traditional media sources is not only shrinking, it's imploding.

Astrophysicists attributed this event to the tidal disruption of a star by a black hole in the center of a distant galaxy.

Everyone pitches in-archaeologists, students and even journalists such as myself-to help shovel excavated soil back into the hole.

Female red palm weevils bore into a palm tree to form a hole into which they lay eggs.

Astronomers have spied a distant black hole in the act of creating the galaxy that will eventually become its home.

Professors can hole up in their own lab or plant themselves in a willing colleague's.

The black hole has a troublesome sibling, the naked singularity.

Pictured is a hole where one of the devices was anchored.

Cut a hole for the sink and other curves with a jigsaw fitted with a wood blade.

Microsoft wasted little time posting a patch to a potentially devastating hole on certain versions of its browser.

There is a huge hole in the secondary curriculum that will inevitably become an enormous problem.

Quasars are the bright, young things of the black hole family, emitting brilliant light as they gobble up matter.

Ben reports that he is having trouble making headway because loose sand is falling into the bottom of the hole.

Slip the dowel through the vertical and into the hole in the box-frame side, then mark and cut the dowel to be flush.

It is not possible to say that supernova can exist as that the sun can not create a black hole.

Today, two colleagues move the kite up and down to force air into the wide hole at the octopus's forehead.

Dig a hole about twice the width of the rootball and build a cone of soil in the center.

Then cut the tip at a diagonal and thread the tube through the hole.

In the pumpkin's back, use a craft knife to cut a hole large enough to slip in the tap light.

Even if it could survive the sun's red giant stage, it would never escape the sun's ultimate destiny: to become a black hole.

Place each plant in its hole so that the top of the root ball is even with the soil surface.

There is a hole in the earths magnetic field over the ocean which is getting bigger.

Dig a large, rough-sided planting hole with sides that slope outward from top to bottom.

Cut a hole in the center of the doily and insert the bouquet stems through the hole.

Amend the soil by mixing compost into the planting hole.

Each birdhouse has a hole in the back and hangs on a hook on the trellis.

She leaves a hole in the center to insert a slow-drip hose.

Drip glue inside each dowel hole and pound dowels into place with a mallet.

Slide the plastic tubing's free end through the drain hole of the large pot.

Position the rose in the hole and fill in around it with soil amended with compost.

Either way, dig a hole twice as wide as the rootball and mix equal parts soil and peat moss.

To minimize shock when planting, cut off container bottom and set both plant and container in planting hole.

Below is a reservoir contained by a pool liner and a pump in a low hole filled with gravel.

The bad ones cannot be replicated and vanish down the memory hole.

If proven, the hole would be the densest object in the known.

Astronomers keen to look into strange hole on second-largest asteroid.

To plant trees and shrubs, dig a planting hole with sides that taper outward into the soil.

The company wanted to fix a security hole that exposed.

The small increase is hardly enough to help organizations out of the giant hole in donations created by the recession.

The problem is the black hole the public sector will have to fill.

They found that the black hole in the center of each.

Some of the water will fill up this hole and the rest will spread out over the globe.

Wow, all those tens of billions of taxpayer funded federal aid down the rat hole.

If there is a worm in the fluid it is drawn towards the hole and held in place by the suction.

But if a black hole has a neighboring star in close orbit, gas from that star is sucked.

Participants usually dance on a board suspended over a hole or buried pot to produce resonance.

The black hole at the galaxy's center is spewing gas.

The problems will stay and the money vanish into a hole where no one will quite be able to tell you what happened to it.

When a captured worm is detected the suction on the hole is released.

Just about any black hole merger would fling the new remnant out of the globular cluster.

As the black hole devours nearby stars, some in-falling matter escapes as hot plasma.

She then pierced a hole in the center of the pancake with the back of her thumb, and laid it in the skillet.

But the likelihood of these black holes becoming the more well-known kind of black hole is nearly nonexistent.

Coon, the university's extension director, has begun planning for a large budgetary hole in the coming year.

Whether the bankers and policymakers behind the recession and the current fiscal hole will notice is unclear.

Cut a hole big enough around the pumpkin stem so that you can easily clean out the pumpkin.

Good thing, because the cost of the real stuff can leave a serious hole in your travel budget.

It is officially barbecue season or, for those to whom barbecue means burying a pig in a hole in the ground, grill season.

Eric's untimely death leaves a hole in the hearts of so many colleagues and friends.

So they had to cut a hole in the ceiling to get the rocket's nose to fit.

Every time a gamma-ray burst goes off, a black hole is born.

We plummeted down the grade toward a shard of ice that threatened to poke a hole in the umiak skin-or in.

Spread adhesive around inside of each hole and insert a copper-pipe end cap.

Grab a cheap paint bucket from the hardware store and use a drill to cut a small hole in the bottom of the bucket.

Now my toe-tapping is digging a nice hole where the carpet under my desk used to be.

Punch a hole at the top and tie a string through the hole.

Camera costs are falling faster than a bowling ball in a black hole.

Take your hole punch and make two holes on the sides.

Before putting, everyone also was asked to draw a circle the size of the hole.

Everybody running behind the unknown dark rabbit hole without knowing where he or she is running towards.

Bright yellow daylilies accent a watering hole for.

It's thinner, lighter and adds a hole for the rear-facing.

Let the students admit, explain, and generally dig themselves a hole.

Polar bears often rest silently at a seal's breathing hole in the ice, waiting for a seal in the water to surface.

The subjects who thought their putter was touched by greatness drew the hole bigger.

Also in the case is that subwoofer, which blows its sound out through a rear-facing hole.

The bus and the vehicles go on their way, while the lady on the paver fixes the hole.

Make the hole big enough so that you can clean out the pumpkin easily.

Astronomers spy one of the brightest and longest gamma-ray bursts ever seen, caused by a black hole swallowing a star.

They've taken x-rays that showed a hole in the back of the mummy's skull.

If photons exert gravity on a black hole then they should be able to escape a black hole.

Once inside you tighten various cords and zippers until you have a narrow hole for your breath to exit.

Poke a hole in the new container's planting mix, place the seedling in the hole, and firm soil around it.

They hav not, ever, detected nor calculated any black hole or any singularity:.

The front hole is placed in the airstream to measure what's called the stagnation pressure.

Block the vent hole with the can or a damp rag, and remove and soak the door in water.

When one crop is harvested, have something ready to plug in the hole.

In the planting hole around each new tree, workers installed three.

We've blocked this hole by putting bricks and landscaping stones over it but rats are wily.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

hole (həʊl)

—n
1.	an area hollowed out in a solid
2.	an opening made in or through something
3.	an animal's hiding place or burrow
4.	informal an unattractive place, such as a town or a dwelling
5.	informal a cell or dungeon
6.	informal (US) a small anchorage
7.	a fault (esp in the phrase pick holes in)
8.	slang a difficult and embarrassing situation
9.	the cavity in various games into which the ball must be thrust
10.	on a golf course
	a. the cup on each of the greens
	b. each of the divisions of a course (usually 18) represented by the distance between the tee and a green
	c. the score made in striking the ball from the tee into the hole
11.	physics
	a. a vacancy in a nearly full band of quantum states of electrons in a semiconductor or an insulator. Under the action of an electric field holes behave as carriers of positive charge
	b. (as modifier): hole current
	c. a vacancy in the nearly full continuum of quantum states of negative energy of fermions. A hole appears as the antiparticle of the fermion
12.	in holes so worn as to be full of holes: his socks were in holes
13.	chiefly (US) in the hole
	a. in debt
	b. (of a card, the hole card, in stud poker) dealt face down in the first round
14.	make a hole in to consume or use a great amount of (food, drink, money, etc): to make a hole in a bottle of brandy

—vb (when intr, often foll by out)
15.	to make a hole or holes in (something)
16.	golf to hit (the ball) into the hole

[Old English hol; related to Gothic hulundi, German Höhle, Old Norse hylr pool, Latin caulis hollow stem; see hollow]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

hole

O.E. hol "orifice, hollow place," from P.Gmc. *khulaz (cf. O.Fris., O.H.G. hol, M.Du. hool, O.N. holr, Ger. hohl "hollow," Goth. us-hulon "to hollow out"), from PIE base *kel- (see cell). As a contemptuous word for "small dingy lodging or abode" it is attested from 1616. Meaning

EXPAND

"a fix, scrape, mess" is from 1760. Obscene slang use for "vulva" is implied from 1340. Hole in the wall "small and unpretentious place" is from 1822; to hole up first recorded 1875. To need (something) like a hole in the head, applied to something useless, first recorded 1951, probably a transl. of a Yiddish expression, cf. ich darf es vi a loch in kop.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Science Dictionary

hole (hōl) Pronunciation Key
A gap, usually the valence band of an insulator or semiconductor, that would normally be filled with one electron. If an electron accelerated by a voltage moves into a gap, it leaves a gap behind it, and in this way the hole itself appears to move through the substance. Even though holes are in fact the absence of a negatively charged particle (an electron), they can be treated theoretically as positively charged particles, whose motion gives rise to electric current.

Slang Dictionary

hole definition

n.
a despised person; an asshole. (Usually objectionable. Also a term of address.) : Sam is such a hole. He needs human being lessons.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

hole definition

electronics
The absence of an electron in a semiconductor material. In the electron model, a hole can be thought of as an incomplete outer electron shell in a doping substance. Holes can also be thought of as positive charge carriers; while this is in a sense a fiction, it is a useful abstraction.
(1995-10-06)

American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

hole

In addition to the idioms beginning with hole, also see ace in the hole; black hole; in a bind (hole); in the hole; money burns a hole in one's pocket; need like a hole in the head; pick holes in; square peg in a round hole.