Holes (1996-2025)
plato.stanford.edu
plato.stanford.edu
This blew me away when learning Portuguese. You have to use different words depending on the kind of hole: for a hole in the ground or in your tooth, it's buraco, and for hole to pass a shoelace, it's furo. A hole that is closed at one end is different than one that's pass-through. I never thought about the distinction before learning another language. "Hole" is more general a word than exists in Portuguese.
Similarly, the word "bump" in English is far more general than any equivalent word in Portuguese. There is no single word in Portuguese that covers all the cases of "bump":
- For bumpy road, you would use esburacada (eg., estrada esburacada)
- For a bump on a table (a surface), you would say solavanco (eg., solavancos na mesa)
- For a bump under a carpet, the best word is caroço (eg., caroço embaixo do tapete)
Using any of the above Portuguese words for a different kind of "bump" would be confusing and may or may not be understood.
Also we don't say caroço or solavanco for that, at least where I live. I would probably say "alto" in both cases.
a. Holes are ontologically parasitic: they are always in something and cannot exist in isolation. (‘There is no such thing as a hole by itself’, Tucholsky 1931: 100; ‘Take away the thing, and the hole goes too’, Heath 1967: 524). This is why there cannot exist a world consisting only of holes (Coggins 2010: 71).
b. Holes are fillable. You don’t necessarily destroy a hole by filling it up (except perhaps when the filling is homogeneous with the hole-lining); you don’t create a new hole by removing the filling.
c. Holes are locationally gracious. When you fill or put something in a hole, the hole does not squeeze to the side; it shares its location with its guest (and if the guest has a hole, you get two co-located entities of the same kind).