Dictionary

holt en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /hoʊlt/ (General-American)
• (Southern-England) audio
• /hɒlt/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /həʊlt/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

From Middle English holt, from Old English holt (“forest, wood, grove, thicket; wood, timber”), from Proto-West Germanic *holt, from Proto-Germanic *hultą (“wood”), from Proto-Indo-European *kald-, *klād- (“timber, log”), perhaps corresponding to a root noun *kél(h₂)d ~ *kól(h₂)d ~ *kl̥(h₂)d- (literally “chopped (wood)”), from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂-, *kleh₂- (“to beat, hew, break, destroy, kill”). Cognate with Scots holt (“a wood, copse, thicket”), North Frisian holt (“wood, timber”), West Frisian hout (“timber, wood”), Dutch hout (“wood, timber”), German Holz (“wood”), Icelandic holt (“woodland, hillock”), Old Irish caill (“forest, wood, woodland”), Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos, “branch, shoot, twig”), Slovene kol (“stake”), Albanian shul (“door latch”). Doublet of hout. See also clade and cladus, possible doublets via Proto-Indo-European.

Meanings

1. A small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.
   • [the gale] 'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger. 1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XXXI, line 5
   • As over Holt and Heath, as thorough Frith and Fell; 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 11 p. 174:
   • Once, at our cottage at Dodford, a tiny thatched village under a steep holt full of foxgloves... 1977, Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts:
2. The lair of an animal, especially of an otter.
   • Where the river begins to slow, at the beginning of the pool, its left bank is bound by the open roots of oak, ash, alder, and sycamore. To hunted otters these trees offered holding as secure as any in the country of the Two Rivers. Harper, the aged hound—he was fourteen years old—knew every holt in the riverside trees of Knackershill Copse, and although he had marked at all of them, only once had he cracked the rib of an otter found in the pool. 1927, Henry William Williamson, Tarka the Otter, Chapter 19:

Forms

Deriveds

Knockholt

Relateds

firth · thicket · grove · wald · woods · shaw · hurst · wood · weald · tree · wold