Hallow or hollow?
hallow is a noun meaning “A saint; a holy person; an apostle”; hollow is a noun meaning “A small valley between mountains”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) hollow is about 38 times as common as hallow.
What is the difference between hallow and hollow?
| hallow | hollow | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection |
| Meaning | A saint; a holy person; an apostle To make holy, to sanctify To shout, especially to urge on dogs for hunting | A small valley between mountains A sunken area on a surface to make a hole in something; to excavate |
| Example | All Hallows Eve (or Halloween), the night before All Hallows Day (now more commonly known as "All Saints' Day") | He built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies |
| Forms | hallows | hollows |
| Pronunciation | /ˈhæləʊ/ /ˈhalo/ /ˈhæloʊ/ | /ˈhɒləʊ/ /ˈhɒlə/ /ˈhɔlo/ |
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words | 8.9 times per million words |
Sources: hallow and hollow in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of hallow and hollow
hallow
- 1
A saint; a holy person; an apostle
All Hallows Eve (or Halloween), the night before All Hallows Day (now more commonly known as "All Saints' Day")
- 2
To make holy, to sanctify
- 3
To shout, especially to urge on dogs for hunting
- 4
A shout, cry; a hulloo
hollow
- 1
A small valley between mountains
He built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies
- 2
to make a hole in something; to excavate
- 3
Having an empty space or cavity inside
a hollow tree; a hollow sphere
- 4
colloquialCompletely, as part of the phrase beat hollow or beat all hollow
- 5
To call or urge by shouting; to hollo
- 6
Alternative form of hollo
- 7
A sunken area on a surface
He held the chick in the hollow of his hand
- 8
Distant, eerie; echoing, reverberating, as if in a hollow space; dull, muffled; often low-pitched
He let out a hollow moan
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, hallow or hollow?
hallow appears about once in every 4 million words; hollow 8.9 times per million words.
hallow about once in every 4 million wordshollow 8.9 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search hallow vs hollow?
“hallow vs hollow” is searched about 480 times a month on Google and 30 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“hollow vs hallow”, “hallow or hollow”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.