• (RP) IPA: /θəʊl/
• (America) IPA: /θoʊl/

From Middle English thole, from tholen, tholien, from Old English þolian, from Proto-West Germanic *þolēn, from Proto-Germanic *þulāną, from Proto-Indo-European *telh₂-, compare Norwegian Bokmål tåle.

thole (tholes, present participle tholing; simple past and past participle tholed)

1. (intransitive, dated) To suffer.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 14: Oxen of the Sun]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC ↗, part II [Odyssey], page 368 ↗:

     Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God’s angel to Mary quoth.

2. (transitive, now, Northern England, Northern Ireland, Scotland) To endure, to put up with, to tolerate.
   • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

     Before long Ailie was silent and white, while her mother rimed on about men and their ways. And then she could thole it no longer, but must go out and walk by the burn to cool her hot brow and calm her thoughts, while the witch indoors laughed to herself at her devices.

• (to suffer)
• (to endure) brook, live with; See also Thesaurus:tolerate

From Middle English thole, from Old English þol, þoll ("oar-pin, rowlock; thole"), from Proto-West Germanic *þoll, from Proto-Germanic *þullaz, *þullō, from Proto-Indo-European *tūl-, *twel-.

thole (plural tholes)

1. A pin in the side of a boat which acts as a fulcrum for the oars.
   • 1847 October 31, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, chapter II, in Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC ↗, part II, page 101 ↗, lines 841–842:

     Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the prairie. / After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance, / As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, [...]

2. A pin, or handle, of the snath (shaft) of a scythe.

• (pin for oars) oarlock, rowlock, tholepin
• (pin of the snath of a scythe) nib

• French: tolet
• German: Dolle
• Italian: scalmo
• Portuguese: tolete
• Spanish: tolete, escálamo

thole (plural tholes)

1. (architecture) A cupola, a dome, a rotunda; a tholus.

• tholobate

1. Surname.