highhole

Also high·hold·er

[hahy-hohl]

noun

1. flicker.

Word History and Origins

Origin of highhole¹

1785–95; earlier highwale, hewhole, variant of hickwall

Example Sentences

When he flashes his wings in straight-away flight before you, or sounds his sharp, single note of alarm, or peers down from the door of his lofty tower, or hangs on its wooden wall, or clinging to a fence stake displays his mottled back, you recognize the fitness of each name the country folk have given him—flicker, yellow-hammer, yarrup, highhole or highholder, and what Thoreau often termed him, partridge-woodpecker.

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But the swallow was familiar, and the robin and the wren and the highhole, while the woodchuck I saw and heard in Wyoming might have been the "chuck" of my native hills.

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The quail has his whistle, the woodpecker his drum, the pewee his plaintive cry, the chickadee his exquisitely sweet call, the highhole his long, repeated "wick, wick, wick," one of the most welcome sounds of spring, the jay his musical gurgle, the hawk his scream, the crow his sturdy caw.

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Probably the warble of the robin, or the call of the meadowlark or of the highhole, if they chanced to hear them, meant no more to these girls.

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I have seen a sharp-shinned hawk pick up a highhole from the turf in a twinkling under just such conditions.

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