Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An island in a river.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hill. Layamon. An islet or a river-island; in the Orkneys, a small island off a larger one.
  • noun A river-meadow; a low flat tract of rich land by the side of a river.
  • noun Holly.
  • noun The holm-oak.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A common evergreen oak, of Europe (Quercus Ilex); -- called also ilex, and holly.
  • noun An islet in a river.
  • noun Low, flat land.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the missel thrush.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Land that is liable to flooding; a river island.
  • noun an islet, sometimes with holly bushes.
  • noun obsolete, except, in dialects The holly.
  • noun A common evergreen oak, of Europe, Quercus ilex; the holm oak.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old Norse hōlmr; see kel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse holmr ("islet"), cognate with Old English holm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Alteration of hollin.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Used in the north of England for a meadow or low ground beside a river.

    October 20, 2009

  • Holm should sound like home. Inserting an L-sound in this word and pronouncing it as spelled is not traditional and not a good idea; most authorities do not recognize this variant. — The Orthoepist

    June 9, 2010