Word.ws English Dictionary

rathole

rathole noun: an entrance to a living area or passageway used by mice or rats.

Noun

rathole (plural ratholes)

  1. An entrance to a living area or passageway used by mice or rats.
  2. A living area used by mice or rats, or a similar living area used by other animals.
    • Bhantus catch the sanda, or broad-tailed lizard, which dwells in rat-holes in the ground and lives always in fear of the cobra.1913, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, page 122
  3. A particularly squalid human residence or other place.
  4. An area of a silo that has undergone ratholing, so that material moves mostly through the centre and accumulates around the edges.
  5. A pigeonhole.

Verb

rathole (third-person singular simple present ratholes, present participle ratholing, simple past and past participle ratholed)

  1. (transitive) To hoard.
  2. (transitive) To take a conversation off topic, especially in technical meetings.
  3. (transitive) To surreptitiously or prematurely remove chips during a poker game.
  4. (intransitive) To exit a cash game and re-enter with a smaller stack.
  5. (intransitive) (of material) To empty only in the center of a hopper or silo, persisting circumferentially.

rathole meaning in Tamil and Tagalog

rathole in Tamil

an entrance to a living area or passageway used by mice or rats
எலிவளை elivaḷai, எலிப்பொந்து elippontu

rathole in Tagalog

an entrance to a living area or passageway used by mice or rats
uot

Synonyms of rathole

Forms of rathole

Noun
pluralratholes
Verb
third-person singular presentratholes
present participleratholing
past participleratholed
pastratholed

Origin of rathole

From rat + hole.

Words formed from rathole

Phrases with rathole

Questions about rathole

What does rathole mean?
Rathole means an entrance to a living area or passageway used by mice or rats.
What is rathole in Tamil?
Rathole in Tamil is எலிவளை (elivaḷai), எலிப்பொந்து (elippontu). See Rathole meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is rathole?
Rathole can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of rathole?
The plural of rathole is ratholes.

Words near rathole in the dictionary

  1. Rathnupur
  2. Ratho
  3. Ratho Station
  4. Rathod
  5. Rathods
  6. rathole
  7. ratholed
  8. ratholes
  9. ratholing
  10. rathood
  11. Rathore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rathole (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-rathole.wav.

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