hollow
Americanadjective
-
hollower,
comparative
-
hollowest
superlative
-
having a space or cavity inside; not solid; empty.
a hollow sphere.
-
having a depression or concavity.
a hollow surface.
-
sunken, as the cheeks or eyes.
-
(of sound) not resonant; dull, muffled, or deep.
a hollow voice.
-
without real or significant worth; meaningless.
a hollow victory.
-
insincere or false.
hollow compliments.
-
hungry; having an empty feeling.
I feel absolutely hollow, so let's eat.
noun
-
hollows
plural
-
an empty space within anything; a hole, depression, or cavity.
-
a valley.
They took the sheep to graze in the hollow.
-
Foundry. a concavity connecting two surfaces otherwise intersecting at an obtuse angle.
verb (used with object)
-
hollows,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hollowed,
past participle, past
-
hollowing
present participle
-
to make hollow (often followed byout ).
to hollow out a log.
-
to form by making something hollow (often followed byout ).
to hollow a place in the sand;
boats hollowed out of logs.
verb (used without object)
-
hollows,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hollowed,
past participle, past
-
hollowing
present participle
adverb
idioms
adjective
-
having a hole, cavity, or space within; not solid
-
having a sunken area; concave
-
recessed or deeply set
hollow cheeks
-
(of sounds) as if resounding in a hollow place
-
without substance or validity
-
hungry or empty
-
insincere; cynical
-
the capacity to eat or drink a lot without ill effects
adverb
noun
-
a cavity, opening, or space in or within something
-
a depression or dip in the land
verb
-
to make or become hollow
-
to form (a hole, cavity, etc) or (of a hole, etc) to be formed
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
hollowsimple
-
hollowssimple
-
have hollowedperfect
-
has hollowedperfect
-
am hollowingprogressive
-
are hollowingprogressive
-
is hollowingprogressive
-
have been hollowingperfect progressive
-
has been hollowingperfect progressive
Past
-
hollowedsimple
-
had hollowedperfect
-
was hollowingprogressive
-
were hollowingprogressive
-
had been hollowingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hollow
First recorded before 900; Middle English holow, holw(e), Old English holh “a hollow place”; akin to hole
Explanation
If something is hollow, it is empty on the inside. A chocolate Easter bunny looks like so much chocolate until you realize that it is hollow and quickly eaten. The idea of emptiness is apparent in the other uses for hollow too. A valley between mountains is called a hollow and if you're really thin, you may have hollow cheeks. Things like words and promises are hollow if the person uttering them does not intend to keep them. And a hollow victory is not very satisfying, as it means that you have reached your goal, but lost something more important along the way.
Vocabulary lists containing hollow
The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 5
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The New SAT: Words to Capture Tone
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Excerpt from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The abject poverty in a rural colonia could be something out of the most dire hollow in Appalachia.
From Slate ● Nov. 2, 2026
Skarsgård’s wicker man is tall, blonde and handsome on the outside, but hollow by design.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
"At a time when both international law and justice are under attack, when too many states attempt to hollow them out, her Nobel Peace Prize could not come at a better time," she said.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
Dig into one’s ideas too much, and eventually they’ll become hollow.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
Hadel took their nest and pulled out the bits of wool and leaves and made a trail for them, leading the pixies away from me to the hollow log.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
These sand-filled hollows are designed to cause golfers trouble.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 4, 2026
Instead, they appeared along the sides of the ridges and within the sandy hollows between them.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 14, 2026
Abandoning a cult is relatively easy compared to unplugging from a hive; although deprogramming can be an arduous process, a hive mind hollows out everything but our skins.
From Salon ● Dec. 29, 2025
These include tree planting or the digging of dips and hollows into the landscape, but are often hampered because a large proportion of river catchments are on private land.
From BBC ● Dec. 9, 2025
Kids were bused in from way up in the hollows and from coal camps such as Davy and Hemphill that were too small to have their own high school.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
It’s hollower than a tweet asking for thoughts and prayers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2025
Were the words that the cast spoke and sung hollower than they’d been 2½ weeks ago?
From Washington Post ● Jun. 26, 2022
Itgen isn’t sure why larger genomes lead to hollower hearts.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 2, 2022
In Kong: Skull Island, he’s bigger—much bigger, so much so that he could stand eye-to-antenna with the Empire State Building without needing to scale it—but he’s hollower, too.
From Slate ● Mar. 9, 2017
Then the clicking of its spikes against the stone suddenly turned into a deeper, hollower sound.
From "The Maze Runner" by James Dashner
In a world sorely lacking global leadership, champions of human rights stand poised to earn only the hollowest of victories.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 20, 2018
Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated for the presidential race, but it was the hollowest of victories.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 27, 2018
This is about the hollowest place I have found yet.
From The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton
He comes from Erin's speechful shore Like fervid kettle, bubbling o'er With hot effusions—hot and weak; Sound, Humbug, all your hollowest drums, He comes, of Erin's martyrdoms To Britain's well-fed Church to speak.
From The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes by William Michael Rossetti
Folk had picked one or the other to win freakishly—on hunches of all sorts, tips of all manners, pure fancy, or “inside information” of the hollowest sort.
From Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 by Various
Head over heels in love with a man she met online, Helen's mother hollowed out a book and put £10,000 cash inside.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
To be sure, it isn’t 1776 or 1976; it’s 2026 and the U.S. has seen its manufacturing base hollowed out.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
Second, it hollowed out Congress’ power to enforce our constitutional promise of racial equality at the polls, insisting that Congress lacked the power to do more than prohibit purposeful racial discrimination.
From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2026
"Wall cabinets, sofas, coffee tables, dining tables, and chairs vanished in an instant. It was as if the entire building had been hollowed out," Wang told the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald.
From Barron's ● Jul. 7, 2026
Lamont had his own room, hollowed out next to ours and very messy.
From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck
The purported hollowing out of the American dream has recently been the subject of many a hand-wringing headline or newspaper column.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
“There’s essentially a hollowing out of the middle,” said Jared Walczak, senior fellow at the Tax Foundation.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 5, 2026
Having promised to reverse what he called the "hollowing out" of the armed forces, the settlement Healey was offered on Monday was not enough for him.
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2026
L.A.’s declining share of a contracting film and television industry is hollowing out its middle class, a group Pratt rarely talks about when homelessness is not at issue.
From Slate ● Jun. 3, 2026
So he dug and dug into the rising snow with the goal of hollowing out a snow cave, a place to weather the terrible storm.
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
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