holt
A small piece of woodland or a woody hillA small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.
Meaning
2 sensesA small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.
The lair of an animal, especially of an otter.
Origin
From Middle English holt, from Old English holt (“forest, wood, grove, thicket; wood, timbFrom Middle English holt, from Old English holt (“forest, wood, grove, thicket; wood, timber”), from Proto-West Germanic *holt, from Proto-Germanic *hultą (“wood”), from Proto-Indo-European *kald-, *klād- (“timber, log”), perhaps corresponding to a root noun *kél(h₂)d ~ *kól(h₂)d ~ *kl̥(h₂)d- (literally “chopped (wood)”), from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₂-, *kleh₂- (“to beat, hew, break, destroy, kill”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.