Word: doghole Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From Middle English doghole. By surface analysis, dog + hole. Pronunciation: /ˈdɒɡhəʊl/, /ˈdɔɡˌhoʊl/, /ˈdɑɡ-/ 1. A place regarded as fit only for dogs: a horrid, mean habitation. Labels: derogatory, idiomatic Example: 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. Example: 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. 2. A small, shallow bay or inlet, usually surrounded by high cliffs, that is accessible only by smaller boats. Example: 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. Example: Ft . Ross was a popular doghole, but its anchorage was discovered much earlier. 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. Example: A far cry from the miserable existance^([sic]) 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 of the expression 'doghole' forever stamped in their minds. Example: 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. 4. A mine worked by fewer than fifteen miners, which is small enough that some safety laws do not apply. Labels: slang Example: 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. Example: Most miners insist they would rather rob a bank or go on welfare than work in a doghole. 5. A mine worked by fewer than fifteen miners, which is small enough that some safety laws do not apply. Labels: slang 6. An excavated area that acts as an access hole or that connects different parts of a mine. Example: 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. Example: 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. 7. A tiny, uncomfortable hole or cell, usually too small to stand in, in which prisoners are confined as punishment. Example: When they want to punish someone, he is put down in a doghole. Example: "Into the doghole with him!" the warden commanded. 8. An underground bolthole dug to hide from enemy soldiers. Example: Forcing 160 of the survivors out of their dogholes, they shot 60 of them to death on the spot. Example: Many of those who had time to get down into dogholes beneath the houses were asphyxiated. 9. One of the entrances to a system of prairie dog tunnels. Example: 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. Example: 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; 10. A hole that was dug by a dog. Example: 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. Example: 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. 11. A hole drilled for the placement of a bench dog. Example: 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. Example: Drill some dogholes, mount a vise, and you have a useful addition to your shop.