Word.ws English Dictionary

holing up

holing up is the present participle and gerund 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.

Questions about holing up

What is holing up the present participle and gerund of?
Holing up is the present participle and gerund of hole up.

Words near holing up in the dictionary

  1. Holiness-Pentecostal
  2. holinesse
  3. holinesses
  4. holing
  5. holing out
  6. holing up
  7. Holingol
  8. holings
  9. holinight
  10. holinights
  11. holins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holing 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.

Last updated:

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