means The plural of hole — openings, gaps, or hollow spaces in or through something solid.

from From Old English 'hol,' meaning a hollow place or cavity, with roots in the Proto-Germanic 'hulan' and tied to the same family as 'hollow.' The deep idea here is emptiness shaped by what surrounds it — the word always pointed at the absence rather than the thing, a gap defined by its edges. Cousins survive across Germanic tongues, like German 'Höhle' (cave) and Dutch 'hol.'