How do you pronounce vole?

The recorded pronunciation is /voʊl/.

vole

/voʊl/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.64 in modern English

Syllables: vole
IPA: /voʊl/

Scrabble Score

Letters

Syllables

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

Any of a large number of species of small rodents of the tribes Arvicolini, Ellobiusini, Clethrionomyini, Pliomyini, Phenacomyini and Prometheomyini.

noun

A deal in a card game, écarté, that draws all the tricks.

Archaic

verb

To win all the tricks by a vole.

Archaic; Intransitive verb

Example Sentences

"Ladies, I'll venture for the vole."
"With humble curate can I now retire, (While good Sir Peter boozes with the squire,) And at backgammon mortify my soul, That pants for loo, or flutters at a vole?"
"no lad shall chuck, or lady vole, But some excising Courtier will have toll."

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.

Origin

Source language: Old Norse

Word Breakdown

Root: vollj, vǫllr, *walþuz, vole

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /voʊl/
British English: /vəʊl/

Usage

Inflected Forms

voles (plural) voles (present, singular) voling (participle, present) voled (participle, past) voled (past)

Derived Forms

volelike volepox

Phrases

Amargosa vole bank vole beach vole Brandt's vole Buchanan vole California vole Clarke's vole common vole

Frequently Paired Words

mouse rat mole mole-rat

Synonyms

field mouse

Rhymes With

whole control role goal lol soul roll hole bowl coal poll sole