Definition of "doghole"

doghole

noun
plural dogholes
1. (idiomatic, derogatory) A place regarded as fit only for dogs: a horrid, mean habitation.
  Quotations
  But, cou’d you be content to bid adieu / To the dear Play-houſe, and the Players too, / Sweet Country Seats are purchas’d ev’ry where, / With Lands and Gardens, at leſs price, than here / You hire a darkſom Doghole by the year.
  1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Third Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], page 47, lines 363–367
  This is the first time I was ever weary of England, and longed to be in Ireland, but it is because go I must; for I do not love Ireland better, nor England, as England, worse; in short, you all live in a wretched, dirty Doghole and Prison, but it is a Place good enough to die in.
  1726, Jonathan Swift, Letter to Sheridan
  I am proud to welcome you to my house, though 'tis but a doghole, may it please your Grace, a mere doghole.
  1886, B.C. Stephenson, Alfred Cellier, Dorothy
  Nice was then no glamorous watering hole but a 'doghole' – 'the most doghole I think that be in world', so Mason wrote to Pate.
  2012, Susan Brigden, Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest, page 379
2. A small, shallow bay or inlet, usually surrounded by high cliffs, that is accessible only by smaller boats.
  Quotations
  Not always this forbidding, some doghole ports like New Haven had safe handling records and managed to load 185 consecutive ships without an incident until the 130 ton Adelaide hit the rocks when a mooring chain broke.
  1983, Billy C. Lewis, “Doghole Schooners of the Redwood Coast”, in The Compass, page 22
  Ft . Ross was a popular doghole, but its anchorage was discovered much earlier.
  1984, Donald H. Keith, Underwater Archaeology, page 104
  These "Doghole” coves were "not much bigger than a hole a dog might crawl into, squirm around and crawl out again."
  1987, Going Places, page 30
  With only the most rudimentary navigational equipment, courageous captains regularly put their small schooners into doghole ports under extremely difficult conditions.
  2011, Stephen W. Hinch, Hiking & Adventure Guide to the Sonoma Coast & Russian River, page 12
  Whether along inland waterways, estuarine spaces, ocean front, coastal doghole, or on ice, maritime societies harbor unique adaptations technologically and culturally; each behavior leaves distinctive fingerprints in the archaeological record accessible through archaeological interpretation of material culture.
  2023, Marco Meniketti, “Introduction. The Long Shore: Perspectives on Maritime Cultural Landscapes”, in Marco Meniketti, editor, The Long Shore, page 4
3. A type of small schooner designed in the 19th century to navigate in shallow waters and to conduct coastal shipping in and out of doghole ports.
  Quotations
  A far cry from the miserable existance[sic] of the common sailor brought about by bucko mates and bible preaching captains on the large ocean-going vessels, life aboard a doghole wasn't for everyone and losing your ship on the rocks or being rolled like a cork on a big wave chased many back to the open sea with an indelible meaning of the expression 'doghole' forever stamped in their minds.
  1983, Billy C. Lewis, “Doghole Schooners of the Redwood Coast”, in The Compass, page 24
  It happened one year, early in the last century, when a doghole schooner foundered , and the poor young man was drowned along with several sailors.
  2017, M Dressler, The Last to See Me
  This lumber was shipped off the coast by loading doghole schooners by cable (Harrison 1892)
  2020, Marco Meniketti, Timber, Sail, and Rail, page 91
4. (mining, slang) A mine worked by fewer than fifteen miners, which is small enough that some safety laws do not apply.
  Quotations
  They know there are thousands of coal miners desperately in need of work, and they know the doghole operators cannot afford to pay these men union wages.
  1973, Gene L. Mason, Fred Vetter, The Politics of Exploitation, page 191
  Most miners insist they would rather rob a bank or go on welfare than work in a doghole.
  1974, George Vecsey, One Sunset a Week: The Story of a Coal Miner, page 55
  He drove his father to the non-union doghole on the side of the mountain .
  1978, William Hoffman, Virginia Reels: Stories, page 92
  1. Such a small mine that is dug independently by one or a few miners, often clandestinely and illegally: a bootleg mine.
5. (mining) An excavated area that acts as an access hole or that connects different parts of a mine.
  Quotations
  The second doghole, driven at 385 feet to one of the pumping units, penetrated a water course, and within a few hours caved material had filled the shaft to 366 feet.
  1962, F. G. Schwartz, B. H. Eccleston, Survey of Research on Thermal Stability of Petroleum Jet Fuels, page 74
  Stope preparation includes the excavation of finger raises, sidelines, undercuts, and dogholes as well as the longholing and blasting of pillars formed by this work.
  1965, R. L. Bolmer, Stresses Induced Around Mine Development Workings by Undercutting and Caving, Climax Molybdenum Mine, Colorado
  The main adit, which yielded the only ore, and a 5-foot-long doghole are shown in figure 17.
  1967, Edward Sheldon Davidson, Geology of the Circle Cliffs Area, Garfield and Kane Counties, Utah, page 79
6. A tiny, uncomfortable hole or cell, usually too small to stand in, in which prisoners are confined as punishment.
  Quotations
  When they want to punish someone, he is put down in a doghole.
  2011, Jack Vance, Ecce and Old Earth
  "Into the doghole with him!" the warden commanded.
  2020, Holman Day, When Egypt Went Broke
  That was a big disgrace for an educated man like him, so Hou grabbed onto the iron bars of the doghole, determined not to be put in there.
  2020, Liao Yiwu, Bullets and Opium, page 211
7. An underground bolthole dug to hide from enemy soldiers.
  Quotations
  Forcing 160 of the survivors out of their dogholes, they shot 60 of them to death on the spot.
  1970 May 21, United States. Congress, Congressional Record
  Many of those who had time to get down into dogholes beneath the houses were asphyxiated.
  1972, The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam, page 67
  The field was all our own in five minutes; the garrison was unscathed, the enemy had six killed, and it must have taken the others weeks to mend their dogholes.
  2020, Gordon Stables, The Cruise of the Snowbird, page 118
8. One of the entrances to a system of prairie dog tunnels.
  Quotations
  Within a week after the volatile drug was placed in the dogholes and the entrances covered up, all but a couple of the animals had been killed.
  2014, Robert A. Mullins, 12 Monkeys & A Green Jacket, page 72
  Bowles looke out over the plain again and noticed every little thing–the rattleweed, planted to regularly on the sandy flat; the dogholes, each with its high-topped mound to keep out the rain and floods; the black line of mesquite brush against the distant hills;
  2021, Dane Coolidge, The Collected Works of Dane Coolidge
  I knew coyotes would lie patiently beside dogholes for hours; I suspected that killing the sagebrush had removed the predator's cover, thereby eliminating the natural control force.
  2022, Tony Malmberg, Green Grass in the Spring: A Cowboy's Guide to Saving the World
9. A hole that was dug by a dog.
  Quotations
  Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times expecially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,— it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.
  1833, Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Restartus
  At this season, one must let sleeping dogs lie, and Grover was wont to retire to the cool shade of his latest doghole scooped out under the dogwood tree by the garden gate and growl "get lost" to anyone who ventured too close.
  1962, Alexander Crosby Brown, Life with Grover, page 56
  He shows John the doghole in progress. So far it's just a pawed depression, but with a little more work the animal will be able to squeeze under the fence.
  2003, Nancy Zafris, The Metal Shredders, page 107
10. A hole drilled for the placement of a bench dog.
  Quotations
  The most conspicuous addition is the screw- operated tail vise found at the right corner of the bench, which was designed to be used in conjunction with a row of dogholes.
  1997, James M. Gaynor, Eighteenth-Century Woodworking Tools, page 168
  Drill some dogholes, mount a vise, and you have a useful addition to your shop.
  2008, Woodworking Techniques
  You can do this using the sliding stop on top of the vise and a row of dogholes bored into the bench surface.
  2014, Woodworking Wisdom & Know-How
verb
third-person singular simple present dogholes, present participle dogholing, simple past and past participle dogholed
1. (mining, slang) To work in a doghole mine, especially to manually dig up a vein.
  Quotations
  Mostly, these activities are restricted to small tunneling, diggings, and dogholing from which the ore is extracted and sent to small cyanidation plants for gold recovery;
  1992, Minerals Yearbook - Volume 3, page 231
  An' doghole that goddamn seam, too.
  2004, Thomas E. Douglass, A Room Forever, page 118
  He tried to think of ways to get Curtis to give up dogholing, and for a moment thought of asking Sally to go into Cheylan with him to look at trailers, but remembered all her talk of leaving.
  2014, Breece Pancake, Trilobites & Other Stories