Holey

//ˈhəʊl.li// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having, or being full of, holes.

    "Fred loved holey Dutch cheese."

Adjective
  1. 1
    allowing passage in and out wordnet

Example

More examples

"What should we do with these holey socks?"

Etymology

From Middle English holy, holi, holly, holli (“holey, spongy, hollow”); equivalent to hole + -y. The e was inserted in Modern English to distinguish the word from holy (“hallowed, sacred”).

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.