1. A small store-place for coals; a coal-cellar; also, the store-place for fuel in a ship.
1661–2. Pepys, Diary, 8 Feb. All the day with the colliers removing the coles out of the old cole hole into the new one.
1797. Anti-Jacobin, No. 1. She whipp’d two female ’prentices to death, And hid them in the coal hole.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 657. The types were flung into the coalhole, and covered with cinders.
1859. Smiles, Self-Help, 13. He would give him his passage if he would trim the coals in the coal-hole of the steamer.
† 2. The place in a furnace for the admission of coal.
1641. French, Distill., iii. (1651), 83. It must be foure [spans] high; one for the Ash-hole, another above the grate to the middle Coal-hole.
3. Sometimes loosely used for the flap-covered hole in a pavement opening into a coal-cellar.
