unhole

unhole verb: to remove or drive out (a creature, a button, etc) from a hole.

Verb

unhole (third-person singular simple present unholes, present participle unholing, simple past and past participle unholed)

(transitive) To remove or drive out (a creature, a button, etc) from a hole.
- [...] superior to other dogs at entering the hole after them, and driving them out or destroying them in the earth, if otherwise they cannot unhole them. The tumbler is chiefly for coney-warrens, where he displays much cunning and sagacity in taking and destroying rabbits[…]1830, John Stevenson, The Sportsman's, Farmer's, and Cattle-doctor's Vade Mecum: Containing the Most Approved Methods ... Etc, page 60
- "'Tis the dry weather unholes them," said Erbengeld. "The pesky critters are wondrous fond of water."1901, William Tucker Washburn, The Deuce of Hearts, page 445

unhole (plural unholes)

That which is not a hole; in particular, that which fills or formerly filled a hole.
- (2) […] If there is no pin, hole or lever in a given position, we talk about unpins, unholes and unlevers. (3) No locks have levers behind unholes, because such a lock could never be opened.1956, Scientific American, page 96
- UNHOLES (HOLE PLUGS) - Great to use for filling holes in firewalls, frame rails, the ends of tubing, or anywhere there is a hole that needs to be “unholed”.(Can we date this quote?), Welder Series catalog, Welder Series, page 52

[…] if the groundhog sees his shadow on the day he unholes himself.1920, National Petroleum News: NPN., page 54:
Subject apparently unhooks button, releases clasp, pulls zipper, draws string, unholes button, loosens band.1969, Lawrence Garber, Garber's Tales from the Quarter, page 230:
[…] the frothy devil [dog] would, at last, unhole itself to charge and chomp.2023, Sidney Thompson, The Forsaken and the Dead: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Three, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 171:

Verb
third-person singular present	unholes
present participle	unholing
past participle	unholed
past	unholed
Noun
plural	unholes

From un- (reversive prefix) + hole.

From un- (not) + hole.

What does unhole mean?: Unhole means to remove or drive out (a creature, a button, etc) from a hole.
How do you use unhole in a sentence?: […] if the groundhog sees his shadow on the day he unholes himself.
What part of speech is unhole?: Unhole can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of unhole?: The past tense of unhole is unholed.

Adapted from Wiktionary: unhole (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: 2026-09-02

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