☼ Concept Map

''hollow'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''hollow'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

hollow - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

hollow (plural hollows)

  • (geography) A small valley between mountains.
    • ✤ He built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies.
    • ✤ Forests grew upon the barren hollows.1
    • ✤ This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.2
    • ✤ I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,/Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,/The red-ribb’d hedges drip with a silent horror of blood,/And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers ‘Death.’3
    • ✤ [T]his is lonesome country; and here in the swamplike hollows where tiger lilies bloom the size of a man’s head, there are luminous green logs that shine under the dark marsh water like drowned corpses…”4
  • A sunken area on a surface.
    • ✤ Synonym: depression
    • ✤ He held the chick in the hollow of his hand.
  • An unfilled space in something solid; a cavity, natural or artificial.
    • ✤ Synonym: niche
    • ✤ a hollow in a tree trunk
  • (figuratively) A feeling of emptiness.
    • ✤ a hollow in the pit of one’s stomach

Verb

hollow (third-person singular simple present hollows, present participle hollowing, simple past and past participle hollowed)

  • (transitive) to make a hole in something; to excavate

Adjective

hollow (comparative hollower, superlative hollowest)

  • (of something solid) Having an empty space or cavity inside.
    • ✤ a hollow tree; a hollow sphere
  • (of a sound) Distant, eerie; echoing, reverberating, as if in a hollow space; dull, muffled; often low-pitched.
    • ✤ He let out a hollow moan.
    • ✤ Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle:5
  • (figuratively) Without substance; having no real or significant worth; meaningless.
    • ✤ a hollow victory
  • (figuratively) Insincere, devoid of validity; specious.
    • ✤ a hollow promise
    • ✤ “Hey, if anything happens to that, my ass is grass,” Y.T. says. She’s trying to sound tough and brave, but it’s a hollow act in these circumstances.6
  • Concave; gaunt; sunken.
    • ✤ To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow7
  • (gymnastics) Pertaining to hollow body position
  • (wine) Synonym of empty (“lacking between the onset of tasting and the finish”).
    • ✤ While most 1974s remain hard, tannic, hollow wines lacking ripeness, flesh, and character, a number of the Graves estates did produce surprisingly spicy, interesting wines.8

Adverb

hollow (not comparable)

  • (colloquial) Completely, as part of the phrase beat hollow or beat all hollow.

Verb

hollow (third-person singular simple present hollows, present participle hollowing, simple past and past participle hollowed)

  • To call or urge by shouting; to hollo.
    • ✤ [T]he Converſation (if it may be called ſo) was ſeldom ſuch as could entertain a Lady. It conſiſted chiefly of Hollowing, Singing, Relations of ſporting Adventures, B—d—y, and Abuſe of Women and of the Government.9
    • ✤ This made Jill pout,
      And she ran out,
      And Jack did quickly follow,
      They rode dog Ball,
      Jill got a fall
      How Jack did laugh and hollow.      10
    • ✤ He has hollowed the hounds.11

Interjection

hollow

  • Alternative form of hollo.

Pronunciation

  • (UK)
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈhɒləʊ/
    • (Northumbria) IPA: /ˈhɒlə/
    • (Scotland) IPA: /ˈhɔlo/
    • (Wales, without the toe–tow merger) IPA: /ˈhɒlou/
  • (US)
    • (General American) IPA: /ˈhɑloʊ/
    • (Southern US, Appalachia) IPA: /ˈhɑlɚ/
  • Rhymes: -ɒləʊ

Etymology 1

From Middle English holow, holowe, holwe, holwȝ, holgh, from Old English holh (“a hollow”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡holh, from Proto-Germanic ﹡hulwiją, from Proto-Germanic ﹡hulaz, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡ḱel- (“to cover, hide”). Cognate with Old High German huliwa and hulwa, Middle High German hülwe. Related to hole.

Etymology 2

From Middle English holowe, holwe, holuȝ, holgh, from the noun (see above).

Etymology 3

Compare holler.

Printed 2026-09-15.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. c. 1710–20, Matthew Prior, The First Hymn Of Callimachus: To Jupiter ↩

  2. 1820 March 5, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number VI, New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC, pages 110–111: ↩

  3. 1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, part I, stanza 1, page 1: ↩

  4. 1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 1: ↩

  5. 1903, George Gordon Byron, On Leaving Newstead Abbey: ↩

  6. 2011, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, Penguin Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 170: ↩

  7. c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC,: ↩

  8. 2002, Robert M. Parker (Jr.), Pierre-Antoine Rovani, Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide (page 175) ↩

  9. 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter IV, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VII, page 26: ↩

  10. 1810, Jack and Jill, and old Dame Gill, York: J. Kendrew, page 5: ↩

  11. 1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •