hollow

What it means

1. geographyA small valley between mountains.

   He built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies.

   4 more examples

   c. 1710–20, Matthew Prior, The First Hymn Of Callimachus: To Jupiter Forests grew upon the barren hollows.

   This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

   1820 March 5, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number VI, New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC, pages 110–111

   I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, / Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath, / The red-ribb'd hedges drip with a silent horror of blood, / And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.'

   1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, part I, stanza 1, page 1

   [T]his is lonesome country; and here in the swamplike hollows where tiger lilies bloom the size of a man's head, there are luminous green logs that shine under the dark marsh water like drowned corpses ..."

   1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 1

2. A sunken area on a surface.

   He held the chick in the hollow of his hand.

   Synonyms: depression

3. An unfilled space in something solid; a cavity, natural or artificial.

   a hollow in a tree trunk

   Synonyms: niche

In a sentence

He built himself a cabin in a hollow high up in the Rockies.

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*ḱel-“to cover, hide”
2. Proto-Germanic*hulaz
3. Proto-Germanic*hulwiją
4. Proto-West Germanic*holh
5. Old Englishholh“a hollow”
6. Middle Englishholow
7. Englishhollow

From Middle English holow, holowe, holwe, holwȝ, holgh, from Old English holh (“a hollow”), from Proto-West Germanic *holh, from Proto-Germanic *hulwiją, from Proto-Germanic *hulaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to cover, hide”). Cognate with Old High German huliwa and hulwa, Middle High German hülwe. Related to hole.