Meaning

(idiomatic, derogatory) A place regarded as fit only for dogs: a horrid, mean habitation..

Definitions by Sense

1. (idiomatic, derogatory) A place regarded as fit only for dogs: a horrid, mean habitation.
2. A small, shallow bay or inlet, usually surrounded by high cliffs, that is accessible only by smaller boats.
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.
4. (mining, slang) A mine worked by fewer than fifteen miners, which is small enough that some safety laws do not apply.
5. (mining) An excavated area that acts as an access hole or that connects different parts of a mine.
6. A tiny, uncomfortable hole or cell, usually too small to stand in, in which prisoners are confined as punishment.
7. An underground bolthole dug to hide from enemy soldiers.
8. One of the entrances to a system of prairie dog tunnels.

Example Sentences

But, cou’d you be content to bid adieu / To the dear Play-houſe, and the Players too, / Sweet Country Seats are purchas’d ev’ry where, / With Lands and Gardens, at leſs price, than here / You hire a darkſom Doghole by the year.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Word Forms

• dogholes
• dogholing
• dogholed

Related Words

When Should You Use Doghole?

Use doghole when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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