Word.ws English Dictionary

foothole

foothole noun: a hole in a cricket pitch made by the bowler's foot during the runup.

Noun

foothole (plural footholes)

  1. A hole in a cricket pitch made by the bowler's foot during the runup.
    • The 24-year-old, who made three one-day appearances against Australia last summer, injured his ankle on Wednesday and further damaged it yesterday when he slipped in the footholes.2006, Mike Averis, The Guardian
    • "The wicket didn't play too bad today. Day five is going to be the biggest worry. The footholes will get bigger as the day goes on."2013, Peter Siddle, BBC Sport
  2. A hole into which the foot can be wedged to aid in climbing; a foothold.
  3. (figuratively) A foothold.
  4. A deep footprint; a hole made by a foot.
    • They floundered into deep footholes at every step.1945, Sara Katherine Casey Maynard, Scott and His Men, page 50
    • Wherever there were tracks of children, sleds, large dogs, other couples, or a solitary walker with long, steady paces, these footholes had filled with a veneer of ice.1952, Ben Maddow, Forty-four Gravel Street, page 99

Examples of foothole in a sentence

  • The trees of the region were fearsomely marked with large footholes scratched by a giant feline animal, and once they saw at a distance a striped creature like a hyena with the markings of a tiger.1976, Christina Stead, Seven Poor Men of Sydney, page 300:
  • When she pulled her boots back out again she tinged her own footholes with red-brown mud, like the edging of blood around a punctured bandage.2007, Owen Sheers, Resistance, page 119:
  • Only two footholes are needed due to the wolf's narrow gait, as the hind foot oversteps the front paw print. (Courtesy Oliver Matla) .2012, Toni Shelbourne, The truth about wolves and dogs, page 20:

Forms of foothole

pluralfootholes
alternative formfoot hole

Origin of foothole

From foot + hole, possibly influenced by foothold.

Questions about foothole

What does foothole mean?
Foothole means a hole in a cricket pitch made by the bowler's foot during the runup.
How do you use foothole in a sentence?
The trees of the region were fearsomely marked with large footholes scratched by a giant feline animal, and once they saw at a distance a striped creature like a hyena with the markings of a tiger.
What part of speech is foothole?
Foothole is a noun.
What is the plural of foothole?
The plural of foothole is footholes.

Words near foothole in the dictionary

  1. foothilly
  2. foothold
  3. footholder
  4. footholders
  5. footholds
  6. foothole
  7. footholes
  8. foothook
  9. foothooks
  10. foothot
  11. footie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foothole (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-foothole.ogg.

Cite this entry: “foothole.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foothole. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.