hole
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
open dictionary
Access
Free
no sign-up needed
Detailed reference entry for the English word "hole", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "hole" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "hole" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hole is aEnglishnoun. It means: A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure. Pronounced /həʊl/. It ranks #2,206 in English word frequency. Often confused with how and hot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hole |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /həʊl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,206 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hole is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /həʊl/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,206 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 21 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for hole, with forms such as "hhole", "hloe", and "hoel". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "how", "hot", "hop", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 unc… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is hole, spelled H-O-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; a dent; a depression; a fissure.
- 2An opening that goes all the way through a solid body, a fabric, etc.; a perforation; a rent.
- 3In games.
- 4In games.
- 5In games.
- 6In games.
- 7In games.
- 8In games.
- 9An excavation pit or trench.
- 10A weakness; a flaw or ambiguity.
- 11In semiconductors, a lack of an electron in an occupied band behaving like a positively charged particle.
- 12A security vulnerability in software which can be taken advantage of by an exploit.
- 13A person's mouth.
- 14Any bodily orifice, in particular the anus.
- 15A vagina.
- 16Solitary confinement, a high-security prison cell often used as punishment.
- 17An undesirable place to live or visit.
- 18Difficulty, in particular, debt.
- 19A chordless cycle in a graph.
- 20A passing loop; a siding provided for trains traveling in opposite directions on a single-track line to pass each other.
- 21A mountain valley.
Etymology
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”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhole,hloe,hoel,holle,ohle
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hole
Misspelling Variants of "hole"
Frequency rank: #2,206 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "hole"?
What does "hole" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "hole"?
How do you pronounce "hole"?
What is the origin of the word "hole"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: