From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
hole
n 1: an opening into or through something
2: an opening deliberately made in or through something
3: one playing period (from tee to green) on a golf course; "he
played 18 holes" [syn: golf hole]
4: an unoccupied space
5: a depression hollowed out of solid matter [syn: hollow]
6: a fault; "he shot holes in my argument"
7: informal terms for a difficult situation; "he got into a
terrible fix"; "he made a muddle of his marriage" [syn:
fix, jam, mess, muddle, pickle, {kettle of
fish}]
8: informal terms for the mouth [syn: trap, cakehole,
maw, yap, gob]
v 1: hit the ball into the hole [syn: hole out]
2: make holes in
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Hole \Hole\, v. i.
To go or get into a hole. --B. Jonson.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Hole \Hole\ (h[=o]l), a.
Whole. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Hole \Hole\ (h[=o]l), 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.
[1913 Webster]
The holes where eyes should be. --Shak.
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The blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes. --Tennyson.
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The priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the
lid. --2 Kings xii.
9.
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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.
[1913 Webster]
The foxes have holes, . . . but the Son of man hath
not where to lay his head. --Luke ix. 58.
3. (Games)
(a) A small cavity used in some games, usually one into
which a marble or ball is to be played or driven;
hence, a score made by playing a marble or ball into
such a hole, as in golf.
(b) (Fives) At Eton College, England, that part of the
floor of the court between the step and the pepperbox.
[Webster 1913 Suppl.]
Syn: Hollow; concavity; aperture; rent; fissure; crevice;
orifice; interstice; perforation; excavation; pit; cave;
den; cell.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
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.
[1913 Webster]
2. To drive into a hole, as an animal, or a billiard ball.
[1913 Webster]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
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)
From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [jargon]:
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.