English
foxhole
Noun

foxhole (plural foxholes)

  1. The burrow in the ground where a fox lives.
  2. (military) A small pit dug into the ground as a shelter for protection against enemy fire.
    • 1962: Hoxie Neale Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry: 1880–1920: Gods of a Changing Poetry (Columbia University Press), page 378 ↗:
      The statement made during the Second World War that “there are no atheists in foxholes” is absurd. Foxholes teem with atheists—who, to be sure, frequently infringe the Third Commandment in their desperation.
Synonyms Translations Translations
  • French: tranchée, trou de tirailleur
  • Russian: око́п
Verb

foxhole (foxholes, present participle foxholing; past and past participle foxholed)

  1. (transitive) To dig a military foxhole into, or convert into a foxhole by digging.
    • 1985, Luther H. Wolff, Forward surgeon: the diary of Luther H. Wolff, M.D. (page 70)
      Trogh and Charlie have started foxholing one corner of our tent, and I helped them a little.
    • 1988, Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, ‎A. L. Marshall, Ambush: The Battle of Dau Tieng (page 43)
      The line was not foxholed in. This is one weakness of the Nungs. They resent digging and so they do not carry entrenching tools into the field.
  2. (transitive) To drive into a military foxhole.
    • 2015, Teri Quatman, Essential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: An Acquired Art
      […] the vet recalled with terrible anguish a scene where he and his friend had been foxholed several dozen yards apart, with a small group of enemy soldiers (Viet Cong) coming toward them over the crest of a hill.


This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
Offline English dictionary