hole

Etymology 1

From Middle English hole, hol, from Old English hol (“orifice, hollow place, cavity”), from Proto-West Germanic *hol, from Proto-Germanic *hulą (“hollow space, cavity”), noun derivative of Proto-Germanic *hulaz (“hollow”), which is of uncertain ultimate origin. Related to hollow.

noun

1. 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.
2. 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.
   […]her palfrey’s footfall shot Light horrors thro’ her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared:[…] 1840, Alfred Tennyson, Godiva
3. (heading) In games.
   1. (golf) 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.
   2. (golf) 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.
   3. (baseball) The rear portion of the defensive team between the shortstop and the third baseman.
      The shortstop ranged deep into the hole to make the stop.
   4. (chess) A square on the board, with some positional significance, that a player does not, and cannot in future, control with a friendly pawn.
   5. (stud poker) A card (also called a hole card) dealt face down thus unknown to all but its holder; the status in which such a card is.
   6. In the game of fives, part of the floor of the court between the step and the pepperbox.
4. (archaeology, slang) An excavation pit or trench.
5. (figurative) A weakness; a flaw or ambiguity.
   I have found a hole in your argument.
   But between the drinks and subtle things / The holes in my apologies, you know / I’m trying hard to take it back 2011, Fun (lyrics and music), “We Are Young”
6. (informal) A container or receptacle.
   car hole;  brain hole
7. (physics) In semiconductors, a lack of an electron in an occupied band behaving like a positively charged particle.
8. (computing) A security vulnerability in software which can be taken advantage of by an exploit.
9. (slang, anatomy) An orifice, in particular the anus. When used with shut it always refers to the mouth.
   Just shut your hole!
10. (Ireland, Scotland, particularly in the phrase "get one's hole") Sex, or a sex partner.
    Are you going out to get your hole tonight?
11. (informal, with "the") Solitary confinement, a high-security prison cell often used as punishment.
    Disciplinary actions can range from a mere write up to serious time in the hole. 2011, Ahmariah Jackson, IAtomic Seven, Locked Up but Not Locked Down
12. (slang) An undesirable place to live or visit.
    His apartment is a hole!
    I have often heard people say, "One can't live upon a view," and I have heard some of the most beautiful places called "awful holes," simply because of the monotonous lives led in them. 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 109
13. (figurative) Difficulty, in particular, debt.
    If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
14. (graph theory) A chordless cycle in a graph.
15. (slang, rail transport) A passing loop; a siding provided for trains traveling in opposite directions on a single-track line to pass each other.
    We’re supposed to take the hole at Cronk and wait for the Limited to pass.

verb

1. (transitive) To make holes in (an object or surface).
   Shrapnel holed the ship's hull.
2. (transitive, by extension) To destroy.
   She completely holed the argument.
3. (intransitive) To go into a hole.
   Good master Picklock, with your worming brain, And wriggling engine-head of maintenance, Which I shall see you hole with very shortly! A fine round head, when those two lugs are off, To trundle through a pillory! 1631, Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, act IV, scene ii
4. (transitive) To drive into a hole, as an animal, or a billiard ball or golf ball.
   If the player holes the red ball, he scores three, and upon holing his adversary's ball, he gains two; and thus it frequently happens, that seven are got upon a single stroke, by caramboling and holing both balls. 1799, Sporting Magazine, volume 13, page 49
   Woods holed a standard three foot putt
5. (transitive) To cut, dig, or bore a hole or holes in.
   to hole a post for the insertion of rails or bars

Etymology 2

adj

1. Obsolete spelling of whole.
   Such was the arrangement of the alphabet over the hole North. 1843, Sir George Webbe Dasent (translator), A grammar of the Icelandic or Old Norse tongue (originally by Rasmus Christian Rask)