Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A venthole, as in a cask.
- noun One of the spiracles or stigmata through which insects respire. Also called
breathing-pore . - noun The spiracle or blowhole of a cetacean.
- noun A hole in the ice where an aquatic mammal, as a seal, comes up to breathe.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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They use their blubber stove to melt snow for drinking water but do not pause to catch fresh meat, despite the many breathing-hole domes Silence points out in the ice.
The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007
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Perhaps in the sunlight of summer, late spring, or autumn its shadow might be visible under the ice, its nose visible beneath the tiny breathing-hole opening … but in starlight?
The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007
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Crozier believes Silence when she strings that there are dozens of such breathing-hole domes within a single seal's territory, but he's damned if he can find them.
The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007
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Once next to the breathing-hole dome in the dark, moving in slow motion, she softly pushes several forked antlers into the snow and sets her knife, harpoon, lines, and other hunting bric-a-brac on them so that she can retrieve them without making a noise.
The Terror Simmons, Dan 2007
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Here is shewn a ghastly pool, a breathing-hole of the grim lord of hell, and a vast chasm breaking into Acheron yawns with pestilential throat.
The Aeneid of Virgil 70 BC-19 BC Virgil
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Porter wore a leather face-mask, with a lozenge-shaped breathing-hole, and slanted openings covered with yellow glass for eyes.
High Adventure A Narrative of Air Fighting in France James Norman Hall 1919
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She had come back to find her breathing-hole and her baby.
The Eskimo Twins 1914
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Each mother seal hollows out a little igloo under the snow, around her breathing-hole, and leaves a tiny hole in the top of it, so her baby can have plenty of fresh air and be hidden from sight at the same time.
The Eskimo Twins 1914
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He knew that by the time he overtook her, and fixed his teeth in her throat, he would be fairly winded; and then, with no breathing-hole at hand, he would die terribly, bumping up against the clear ice and staring madly through at the free air for which his lungs were agonizing.
The Watchers of the Trails A Book of Animal Life Charles George Douglas Roberts 1901
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As soon as the dog had scented a breathing-hole, Kotuko would reverse the sleigh, driving a couple of sawed-off antlers, that stuck up like perambulator-handles from the back-rest, deep into the snow, so that the team could not get away.
The Second Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1900
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