Word.ws English Dictionary

holed up

holed up is the simple past and past participle of hole up.

Meaning of hole up

Verb

hole up (third-person singular simple present holes up, present participle holing up, simple past and past participle holed up)

  1. (intransitive) To go into a hole, to shelter in a hole.
    • In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan bears enter winter dens in October; in the South, later; even in Florida bears “hole up” during the coldest weather.1998, John Whitaker, William Hamilton, Mammals of the Eastern United States, page 424
  2. (intransitive) To hide.
    • The guerrillas holed up in a small cave.

Forms of holed up

comparativemore holed up
superlativemost holed up

Questions about holed up

What is holed up the simple past and past participle of?
Holed up is the simple past and past participle of hole up.

Words near holed up in the dictionary

  1. Holecek
  2. Holeceks
  3. Holechek
  4. holed
  5. holed out
  6. holed up
  7. holeful
  8. holefuls
  9. holei
  10. holeless
  11. holelessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holed up (page history and authors); hole up (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.

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