Words / B / General

bolt-hole

noun/ˈbəʊlthəʊl/

C2CEFR level
65/100Rarity: rare
InformalRegister

A place to which one can escape and take refuge.

The cottage was his bolt-hole, a place to vanish whenever the city became too much.

Similar: retreat, hideaway, refuge

Origin: From bolt 'to dash away' + hole, originally an animal's escape burrow.

Topic: refuge in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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