vole
UK /vəʊl/ · US /voʊl/ noun, verb
Forms voles voling voled
- noun Any of a large number of species of small rodents of the tribes Arvicolini, Ellobiusini, Clethrionomyini, Pliomyini, Phenacomyini and Prometheomyini.
- noun (archaic) A deal in a card game, écarté, that draws all the tricks.
- verb (archaic, card games, intransitive) To win all the tricks by a vole.
Synonyms
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.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A deal at cards that draws all the tricks. Swift.
- verb To win all the tricks by a vole. Pope.
- noun Any one of numerous species of micelike rodents belonging to Arvicola and allied genera of the subfamily Arvicolinæ. They have a thick head, short ears, and a short hairy tail.
Etymology [F.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “vole”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details