Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having a cavity, gap, or space within: a hollow wall.
- adj. Deeply indented or concave; sunken: "His bearded face already has a set, hollow look” ( Conor Cruise O'Brien).
- adj. Without substance or character: a hollow person. See Synonyms at vain.
- adj. Devoid of truth or validity; specious: "Theirs is at best a hollow form of flattery” ( Annalyn Swan).
- adj. Having a reverberating, sepulchral sound: hollow footsteps.
- n. A cavity, gap, or space: a hollow behind a wall.
- n. An indented or concave surface or area.
- n. A void; an emptiness: a hollow in one's life.
- n. A small valley between mountains.
- v. To make hollow: hollow out a pumpkin.
- v. To scoop or form by making concave: hollow out a nest in the sand.
- v. To become hollow or empty.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A cavity; a depression or an excavation below the general level, as of the ground, or in the substance of anything; an empty space in anything; a concavity.
- n. Specifically, a concave space of ground; a piece or tract of land lower than the general level, or hemmed in by hills: used in many place-names in the United States: as, Sleepy Hollow in New York.
- n. A concave plane used in working moldings.
- n. A strip of thick paper or of pasteboard cut to the exact height and thickness required for a book for which the boards and cloth are intended, and which acts as a gage for the guidance of the case-makers, and as a stiffener for the cloth at the back of the book between the boards.
- Having a cavity within; having an empty space in the interior: as, a hollow tree; a hollow rock; a hollow sphere.
- Having a concavity; concave; sunken: as, a hollow way or road.
- Resembling sound reverberated from a cavity, or producing such a sound; deep; low.
- Empty; without contents; hence, without pith or substance; fruitless; worthless: as, a hollow victory; a hollow argument.
- Not sincere or faithful; false; deceitful; not sound: as, a hollow heart.
- Void of meaning or truth; empty; baseless: as, hollow oaths; a hollow mockery.
- Thorough; complete; out-and-out.
- Having, as wool, the fibers torn apart, so that it is light and open.
- Synonyms Empty, void, cavernous.
- Faithless, iusincere, treacherous, hypocritical.
- To make hollow; excavate; make empty.
- To bend into a curved or concave form.
- Beyond doubt or question; utterly; completely; out-and-out: often with all for emphasis: as, he beat him hollow, or all hollow; he carried it hollow.
- A variant of hollo.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having an empty space or cavity inside.
- adj. Distant, eerie; echoing, reverberating, as if in a hollow space; dull, muffled; often low-pitched.
- adj. Without substance; having no real or significant worth; meaningless.
- adj. Insincere, devoid of validity; specious.
- n. A small valley between mountains; "he built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies"
- n. A sunken area in something solid.
- n. A sunken area, the equivalent to a copse in British English.
- n. A feeling of emptiness.
- v. to make a hole in something; to excavate
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having an empty space or cavity, natural or artificial, within a solid substance; not solid; excavated in the interior
- adj. Depressed; concave; gaunt; sunken.
- adj. Reverberated from a cavity, or resembling such a sound; deep; muffled.
- adj. Not sincere or faithful; false; deceitful; not sound
- n. A cavity, natural or artificial; an unfilled space within anything; a hole, a cavern; an excavation; as the
hollow of the hand or of a tree. - n. A low spot surrounded by elevations; a depressed part of a surface; a concavity; a channel.
- v. To make hollow, as by digging, cutting, or engraving; to excavate.
- adv. Wholly; completely; utterly; -- chiefly after the verb
to beat , and often withall . See all, adv. - interj. Hollo.
- v. To shout; to hollo.
- v. To urge or call by shouting.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a cavity or space in something
- adj. devoid of significance or point
- n. a small valley between mountains
- adj. not solid; having a space or gap or cavity
- n. a depression hollowed out of solid matter
- adj. as if echoing in a hollow space
- v. remove the interior of
- v. remove the inner part or the core of
Etymologies
- Middle English holwe, holowe, from holgh, hole, burrow (influenced by hole, hollow), from Old English holh; see kel-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“We did nothing when we heard the shooting as your airship took flight, then … He shrugged, his expression hollow.”
“The nut looked as if it were filled with tobacco or black rich earth; it was what we call hollow, or worm-eaten.”
“Economists and pundits have long feared the emergence of what they called "hollow corporations," or businesses that don't actually produce actual goods or services themselves, but instead act as brokers or intermediaries relying on networks of suppliers and partners.”
“He said last week that it would lead to what he calls a hollow force.”
“X-ray laser, scientists managed to create what they called hollow atoms, giving just a preview of the kind of science expected to be done there.”
“Change FG-COMPOSITE Display to edit (half visible triangles, and VIVID NON RED points, and light boundary). the boundary will be handy change FGX display style to be what I referred to as hollow with my team.”
“I use Hornady 75 grain hollow points or VMAX for varmints but will shoot 87 grain hollow points if I am hunting coyotes at 200-600 yards (the 75 grain decks them all right but can kind of blow them up if you hit them wrong).”
best 25-06 bullet for whitetail deer at around 100-200 yard shots? brand, grain wt., etc.
“Rhetoric, delivered empty, echos well in hollow minds of G (no) P-baggers …”
Think Progress » DeMint Lies: ‘I Did Not Want’ Health Care ‘To Be The President’s Waterloo’
“Look at Remington bullets, their 300 grain hollow points and 405 gain flat nose bullets are very good and are cheaper than most other 45/70 jacketed bullets out there.”
“Winchester 150 grain hollow points boadsided at about 30 yards.”
Think back..What was the gun you used to kill your first whitetail?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hollow’.
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The Bindery
A list of bookbinding terms and phrases, for assembling new or repairing/reassembling old books.
perfect binding, animal glue, spine, textblock, polyvinyl acetate, double-fan adhesi..., board, backing, rounding, bone, book cloth, pasteboard and 260 more...
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Adjectives
sagacious, average, angry, mad, crazy, giant, ugly, pretty, happy, sad, lonely, solitary and 119 more...
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kahleigh's list
therapeutic, charade, chalice, rendezvous, amarulence, bewitched, transcendence, passe, cul-de-sac, boulevard, bouquet, forlorn and 18 more...
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Cool sounding words
Stuff that either rolls off the tongue really well or sounds interesting.
suppurate, inveterate, douche, Constantinople, zyzygy, polyglot, serendipitous, vivisection, solypsis, conflagration, instupituous, fecundity and 52 more...
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Water always flows downhill
The path of least resistance, watercourses, plumbing....
swale, hollow, creek, crick, depression, holler, draw, ditch, corrie, cwm, continental divide, stream and 66 more...

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