Added 9 October 2026

hole

/həʊl/ noun

In Latin: cavum, forāmen, fovea Wiktionary

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about hole at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

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.
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.
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. 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.

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”).