doghole

English

Etymology

From Middle English doghole; equivalent to dog +‎ hole.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

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Noun

doghole (plural dogholes)

1. A place fit only for dogs; a vile, mean habitation or apartment.
   • 1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Third Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: Printed for Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:

     With lands and gardens, at less price than here
     You hire a darksome doghole by the year

   • 1726, Jonathan Swift, Letter to Sheridan:

     This is the first time I was ever weary of England, and longed to be in Ireland, but it is because go I must; for I do not love Ireland better, nor England, as England, worse; in short, you all live in a wretched, dirty Doghole and Prison, but it is a Place good enough to die in.

   • 1886, B.C. Stephenson, Alfred Cellier, Dorothy:

     I am proud to welcome you to my house, though 'tis but a doghole, may it please your Grace, a mere doghole.

   • 2012, Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest:

     Nice was then no glamorous watering hole but a 'doghole'—'the most doghole I think that be in world', so Mason wrote to Pate.

2. A small, shallow bay or inlet, usually surrounded by high cliffs, that is accessible only by smaller boats.
   • 1983, Billy C. Lewis, “Doghole Schooners of the Redwood Coast”, in The Compass, page 22:

     Not always this forbidding, some doghole ports like New Haven had safe handling records and managed to load 185 consecutive ships without an incident until the 130 ton Adelaide hit the rocks when a mooring chain broke.

   • 1984, Donald H. Keith, Underwater Archaeology, page 104:

     Ft . Ross was a popular doghole, but its anchorage was discovered much earlier.

   • 1987, Going Places, page 30:

     These "Doghole” coves were "not much bigger than a hole a dog might crawl into, squirm around and crawl out again."

   • 2011, Stephen W. Hinch, Hiking & Adventure Guide to the Sonoma Coast & Russian River, page 12:

     With only the most rudimentary navigational equipment, courageous captains regularly put their small schooners into doghole ports under extremely difficult conditions.

   • 2023, Marco Meniketti, The Long Shore, page 4:

     Whether along inland waterways, estuarine spaces, ocean front, coastal doghole, or on ice, maritime societies harbor unique adaptations technologically and culturally; each behavior leaves distinctive fingreprints in the archaeological record accessivle through archaeological interpretation of material culture.

3. A type of small schooner designed in the 19th century to navigate in shallow waters and to conduct coastal shipping in and out of doghole ports.
   • 1983, Billy C. Lewis, “Doghole Schooners of the Redwood Coast”, in The Compass, page 22:

     A far cry from the miserable existance of the common sailor brought about by bucko mates and bible preaching captains on the large ocean-going vessels, life aboard a doghole wasn't for everyone and losing your ship on the rocks or being rolled like a cork on a big wave chased many back to the open sea with an indelible meaning o fthe expression 'doghole' forever stamped in their minds.

   • 2017, M Dressler, The Last to See Me:

     It happened one year, early in the last century, when a doghole schooner foundered , and the poor young man was drowned along with several sailors.

   • 2020, Marco Meniketti, Timber, Sail, and Rail, page 91:

     This lumber was shipped off the coast by loading doghole schooners by cable (Harrison 1892)

4. (mining, slang) A mine worked by fewer than fifteen miners, which is small enough that some safety laws do not apply.
   • 1973, Gene L. Mason, ‎Fred Vetter, The Politics of Exploitation, page 191:

     They know there are thousands of coal miners desperately in need of work, and they know the doghole operators cannot afford to pay these men union wages.

   • 1974, George Vecsey, One Sunset a Week: The Story of a Coal Miner, page 55:

     Most miners insist they would rather rob a bank or go on welfare than work in a doghole.

   • 1978, William Hoffman, Virginia Reels: Stories, page 92:

     He drove his father to the non-union doghole on the side of the mountain .

5. (mining) An excavated area that acts as an access hole or that connects different parts of a mine.
   • 1962, F. G. Schwartz, B. H. Eccleston, Survey of Research on Thermal Stability of Petroleum Jet Fuels, page 74:

     The second doghole, driven at 385 feet to one of the pumping units, penetrated a water course, and within a few hours caved material had filled the shaft to 366 feet.

   • 1965, R. L. Bolmer, Stresses Induced Around Mine Development Workings by Undercutting and Caving, Climax Molybdenum Mine, Colorado:

     Stope preparation includes the excavation of finger raises, sidelines, undercuts, and dogholes as well as the longholing and blasting of pillars formed by this work.

   • 1967, Edward Sheldon Davidson, Geology of the Circle Cliffs Area, Garfield and Kane Counties, Utah, page 79:

     The main adit, which yielded the only ore, and a 5-foot-long doghole are shown in figure 17.

6. A tiny, uncomfortable hole or cell, usually too small to stand in, in which prisoners are confined as punishment.
   • 2011, Jack Vance, Ecce and Old Earth:

     When they want to punish someone, he is put down in a doghole.

   • 2020, Holman Day, When Egypt Went Broke:

     "Into the doghole with him!" the warden commanded.

   • 2020, Liao Yiwu, Bullets and Opium, page 211:

     That was a big disgrace for an educated man like him, so Hou grabbed onto the iron bars of the doghole, determined not to be put in there.

7. An underground bolthole dug to hide from enemy soldiers.
   • 1970 May 21, United States. Congress, Congressional Record:

     Forcing 160 of the survivors out of their dogholes, they shot 60 of them to death on the spot.

   • 1972, The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam, page 67:

     Many of those who had time to get down into dogholes beneath the houses were asphyxiated.

   • 2020, Gordon Stables, The Cruise of the Snowbird, page 118:

     The field was all our own in five minutes; the garrison was unscathed, the enemy had six killed, and it must have taken the others weeks to mend their dogholes.

8. One of the entrances to a system of prairie dog tunnels.
   • 2014, Robert A. Mullins, 12 Monkeys & A Green Jacket, page 72:

     Within a week after the volatile drug was placed in the dogholes and the entrances covered up, all but a couple of the animals had been killed.

   • 2021, Dane Coolidge, The Collected Works of Dane Coolidge:

     Bowles looke out over the plain again and noticed every little thing–the rattleweed, planted to regularly on the sandy flat; the dogholes, each with its high-topped mound to keep out the rain and floods; the black line of mesquite brush against the distant hills;

   • 2022, Tony Malmberg, Green Grass in the Spring: A Cowboy's Guide to Saving the World:

     I knew coyotes would lie patiently beside dogholes for hours; I suspected that killing the sagebrush had removed the predator's cover, thereby eliminating the natural control force.

9. A hole that was dug by a dog.
   • 1833, Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Restartus:

     Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times expecially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,— it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

   • 1962, Alexander Crosby Brown, Life with Grover, page 56:

     At this season, one must let sleeping dogs lie, and Grover was wont to retire to the cool shade of his latest doghole scooped out under the dogwood tree by the garden gate and growl "get lost" to anyone who ventured too close.

   • 2003, Nancy Zafris, The Metal Shredders, page 107:

     He shows John the doghole in progress. So far it's just a pawed depression, but with a little more work the animal will be able to squeeze under the fence.

10. A hole drilled for the placement of a bench dog.
    • 1997, James M. Gaynor, Eighteenth-Century Woodworking Tools, page 168:

      The most conspicuous addition is the screw- operated tail vise found at the right corner of the bench, which was designed to be used in conjunction with a row of dogholes.

    • 2008, Woodworking Techniques:

      Drill some dogholes, mount a vise, and you have a useful addition to your shop.

    • 2014, Woodworking Wisdom & Know-How:

      You can do this using the sliding stop on top of the vise and a row of dogholes bored into the bench surface.

Verb

doghole (third-person singular simple present dogholes, present participle dogholing, simple past and past participle dogholed)

1. (mining, slang) To work in a doghole mine, especially to manually dig up a vein.
   • 1992, Minerals Yearbook - Volume 3, page 231:

     Mostly, these activities are restricted to small tunneling, diggings, and dogholing from which the ore is extracted and sent to small cyanidation plants for gold recovery;

   • 2004, Thomas E. Douglass, A Room Forever, page 118:

     An' doghole that goddamn seam, too.

   • 2014, Breece Pancake, Trilobites & Other Stories:

     He tried to think of ways to get Curtis to give up dogholing, and for a moment thought of asking Sally to go into Cheylan with him to look at trailers, but remembered all her talk of leaving.