Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A repository for ashes; the lower part of a furnace; an ash-bin.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Enniscorth, and she was so poor she had no clothes to put on her son; so she used to fix him in the ash-hole, near the fire, and pile the warm ashes about him; and according as he grew up, she sunk the pit deeper.

    Celtic Fairy Tales Joseph Jacobs 1885

  • When everything had been examined and placed on its appropriate end of the table, Miss Panney called for an empty coalscuttle, into which she tumbled, without regard to spilling or breakage, the whole mass of medicaments which had been prepared or prescribed by herself, and she then requested the servant to deposit the contents of the scuttle in the ash-hole.

    The Girl at Cobhurst Frank Richard Stockton 1868

  • The old man planted a cabbage-head in the cellar under the floor of his cottage; the old woman planted one in the ash-hole.

    Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore William Ralston Shedden Ralston 1858

  • The old woman's cabbage, in the ash-hole, withered away entirely; but the old man's grew and grew, grew up to the floor.

    Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore William Ralston Shedden Ralston 1858

  • Don't you know that St. Dunstan's devil emerged from the ash-hole?

    I and My Chimney 1856

  • Yes, I dare say there is a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that we drop down the queer hole yonder? '

    I and My Chimney 1856

  • This provoked the Irishman and his wife, and as the old man was taking out ashes from an ash-hole, the master went down, and as the slave raised his head, the man struck him about the temple, with a long handled scrubbing-brush.

    A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Themselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada 1856

  • Don't you know that St. Dunstan's devil emerged from the ash-hole?

    I and My Chimney Herman Melville 1855

  • The dog in the ash-hole makin 'brose, Doon comes a cinder and burns his nose.

    Wee Yowe 1847

  • The servant-girl, who, though careless, was honest, confessed she recollected having accidentally left this bucket in that dangerous place the preceding evening; that she was going with it across the yard to the ash-hole, but she heard her lover whistle to her from the lane, and she set down the bucket in a hurry, ran to meet him, and forgot the ashes.

    Tales and Novels — Volume 02 Maria Edgeworth 1808

Comments

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  • ...now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers...

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 50

    Stop sniggering at the back.

    July 25, 2008

  • I'm going to have to start using this. See swear jar.

    July 25, 2008

  • Yesh. Sho am I.

    July 29, 2008

  • I knew a girl named Ashole once.

    July 29, 2008

  • Why? Why would you do that to your own child?

    July 29, 2008

  • Send her over to Real Names, trivet.

    July 29, 2008