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Vinony

holt

noun

  1. small woodland
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Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /hɒlt/ / /həʊlt/ / /hoʊlt/

name

Etymology: English, Dutch, north German, Norwegian and Danish surname, all from the noun holt (“copse, woodland”).

  1. A surname An English and north-west European topographic surname for someone who lived by a small wood.
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noun

Etymology: From 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”). Cognate with Scots holt (“a wood, copse, thicket”), North Frisian holt (“wood, timber”), West Frisian hout (“timber, wood”), Dutch hout (“wood, timber”), German Holz (“wood”), Icelandic holt (“woodland, hillock”), Old Irish caill (“forest, wood, woodland”), Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos, “branch, shoot, twig”), Slovene kol (“stake”), Albanian shul (“door latch”). Doublet of hout. See also clade and cladus, possible doublets via Proto-Indo-European.

  1. A small piece of woodland or a woody hill; a copse.

    “As over Holt and Heath, as thorough Frith and Fell;”

    “[the gale] 'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger.”

  2. The lair of an animal, especially of an otter.

    “Where the river begins to slow, at the beginning of the pool, its left bank is bound by the open roots of oak, ash, alder, and sycamore. To hunted otters these trees offered holding as secure as any in the country of the Two Rivers. Harper, the aged hound—he was fourteen years old—knew every holt in the riverside trees of Knackershill Copse, and although he had marked at all of them, only once had he cracked the rib of an otter found in the pool.”