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Synonyms
hole
- 11 dictionary resultshole
[hohl]
noun, verb, holed, hol⋅ing.–noun
| 1. | an opening through something; gap; aperture: a hole in the roof; a hole in my sock. |
| 2. | a hollow place in a solid body or mass; a cavity: a hole in the ground. |
| 3. | the excavated habitation of an animal; burrow. |
| 4. | a small, dingy, or shabby place: I couldn't live in a hole like that. |
| 5. | a place of solitary confinement; dungeon. |
| 6. | an embarrassing position or predicament: to find oneself in a hole. |
| 7. | a cove or small harbor. |
| 8. | a fault or flaw: They found serious holes in his reasoning. |
| 9. | a deep, still place in a stream: a swimming hole. |
| 10. | Sports.
|
| 11. | Golf.
|
| 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. |
–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.). |
–verb (used without object)
—Verb phrases| 20. | to make a hole or holes. |
| 21. | hole out, Golf. to strike the ball into a hole: He holed out in five, one over par. |
| 22. | hole up,
|
| 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, esp. one that is dingy, shabby, or out-of-the-way: Their first shop was a real hole in the wall. |
| 25. | in a or 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 or holes in, to find a fault or flaw in: As soon as I presented my argument, he began to pick holes in it. |
Related forms:
holeless, adjective
holey, adjective
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.
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. 2009.
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To hole
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Hole
Hole\ (h[=o]l), a. Whole. [Obs.] --Chaucer.Hole
Hole\, n. [OE. hol, hole, AS. hol, hole, cavern, from hol, a., hollow; akin to D. hol, OHG. hol, G. hohl, Dan. huul hollow, hul hole, Sw. h[*a]l, Icel. hola; prob. from the root of AS. helan to conceal. See Hele, Hell, and cf. Hold of a ship.]1. A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; an opening in or through a solid body, a fabric, etc.; a perforation; a rent; a fissure. The holes where eyes should be. --Shak. The blind walls Were full of chinks and holes. --Tennyson. The priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid. --2 Kings xii. 9. 2. An excavation in the ground, made by an animal to live in, or a natural cavity inhabited by an animal; hence, a low, narrow, or dark lodging or place; a mean habitation. --Dryden. The foxes have holes, . . . but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. --Luke ix. 58. Syn: Hollow; concavity; aperture; rent; fissure; crevice; orifice; interstice; perforation; excavation; pit; cave; den; cell. Hole and corner, clandestine, underhand. [Colloq.] "The wretched trickery of hole and corner buffery." --Dickens. Hole board (Fancy Weaving), a board having holes through which cords pass which lift certain warp threads; -- called also compass board.Hole
Hole\, v. t. [AS. holian. See Hole, n.]1. To cut, dig, or bore a hole or holes in; as, to hole a post for the insertion of rails or bars. --Chapman. 2. To drive into a hole, as an animal, or a billiard ball.Hole
Hole\, v. i. To go or get into a hole. --B. Jonson.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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hole
n. A region in an otherwise flat entity which is not actually present. For example, some Unix filesystems can store large files with holes so that unused regions of the file are never actually stored on disk. (In techspeak, these are referred to as `sparse' files.) As another example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved for memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be present is called `the I/O hole', since memory-management systems must skip over this area when filling user requests for memory.
Jargon File 4.2.0
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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 "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, ptobably a transl. of a Yiddish expression, cf. ich darf es vi a loch in kop.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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| 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. |
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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hole 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)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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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.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Copyright © 2009, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.


