Vole
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Any of a large number of species of small rodents of the tribes Arvicolini, Ellobiusini, Clethrionomyini, Pliomyini, Phenacomyini and Prometheomyini.
- 2 A deal in a card game, écarté, that draws all the tricks. archaic
"Ladies, I'll venture for the vole."
- 3 any of various small mouselike rodents of the family Cricetidae (especially of genus Microtus) having a stout short-tailed body and inconspicuous ears and inhabiting fields or meadows wordnet
- 1 To win all the tricks by a vole. archaic, intransitive
"no lad shall chuck, or lady vole, But some excising Courtier will have toll."
Example
More examples"Help me finish building this vole ladder and I'll treat you to dinner."
Etymology
Borrowed from Norn vollj, from Old Norse vǫllr (“field”), from Proto-Germanic *walþuz (“forest”). The Orkney dialectal term vole mouse, lit. “field mouse”, was introduced to general English by George Barry in 1805; John Fleming in 1828 was first to refer to the creature by the epithet vole alone. Displaced earlier names for these species which also classified them as mice, e.g. short-tailed field mouse.
Borrowed from French vole.
Related phrases
More for "vole"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.