Definition of "doghole"
doghole
noun
plural dogholes
(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
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
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
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
One of the entrances to a system of prairie dog tunnels.
Quotations
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
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
verb
third-person singular simple present dogholes, present participle dogholing, simple past and past participle dogholed