How to Use hole up in a Sentence

hole up

verb
  • A lot of it was just that — holed up in a house.
    — Josh Crutchmer, Rolling Stone, 28 Dec. 2025
  • That house they’re holed up in might start to feel more like a prison.
    — Udonis Haslem, Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024
  • So we were holed up in that lake house, and that was the same week.
    — Jackie Strause, HollywoodReporter, 2 Sep. 2025
  • He's holed up in some bunker or in some-- secret place.
    — CBS News, 10 May 2026
  • That means moms and dads hole up in the room for days, sometimes weeks.
    — Courtney Tanner, The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 Oct. 2021
  • At least one suspect was holed up in a local store, sources said.
    — NBC News, 10 Dec. 2019
  • But the flick’s real star is the airport lounge where the swells hole up.
    — Barbara Peterson, WSJ, 15 Oct. 2022
  • Lindsey then holed up in the apartment for almost a full day.
    — NBC News, 15 June 2018
  • Minor, burning a hole up the line, had already smacked the base.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 May 2022
  • Even though the entire herd appears to be on its feet, one buck is still holed up in his fortress.
    — Josh Honeycutt, Outdoor Life, 19 Dec. 2024
  • Now some people will drink too much, drive too fast, or hole up and watch TV.
    — Florence Williams, The Atlantic, 1 Feb. 2022
  • Bed bugs will hole up in furniture, along baseboards, in cracks in walls and, yes, in beds.
    — The Good Housekeeping Institute, Good Housekeeping, 18 Mar. 2019
  • One way to work on that this summer is to hole up in a quiet room and do nothing but watch video.
    — Tom Orsborn, San Antonio Express-News, 27 Apr. 2018
  • They were holed up with strangers in a Matamoros hotel that felt much safer than the tent camps.
    — Maria Sacchetti, Washington Post, 18 July 2023
  • To my mind, January is a good month for holing up in old joints.
    — Pete Wells, New York Times, 4 Jan. 2024
  • Workers were holed up at the mine over the weekend, afraid to leave because of threats by armed groups.
    — Fox News, 28 May 2018
  • The suspect then holed up in a stairwell with a shotgun, Doty said.
    — CBS News, 4 July 2018
  • That helped agents to determine a pattern of where Guzmán was holed up.
    — NBC News, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Ewing phoned the apartment where the gunmen and hostages were holed up, and then yelled up the stairs at them.
    — Bob Goldsborough, latimes.com, 28 June 2019
  • Some were holed up in a makeshift treehouse and on the roof of a single-story building in the park.
    — Hannah Wiley, Los Angeles Times, 4 Jan. 2024
  • He was holed up with his mother and sister trying to detox from the madness of back-to-back shows.
    — Jay Bulger, Vulture, 20 Nov. 2024
  • Fight the urge to hole up inside this fall and winter and explore these four great escapes across the state.
    — Chelsey Lewis, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11 Oct. 2017
  • With few, if any, holes up front or on the back end, the Hurricanes are a very hard team to match up against.
    — The Athletic Nhl, New York Times, 3 May 2025
  • There are three or four girls holed up in a hotel next to a McDonald’s.
    — Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 4 Jan. 2024
  • The bullet broke her shoulder, went straight through her vitals, and holed up against her hide on the other side.
    — Cheyne Matzenbacher, Outdoor Life, 3 Dec. 2025
  • On the next play, Mostert cruised through a cavernous hole up the middle for a 10-yard score.
    — Eric Branch, SFChronicle.com, 8 Dec. 2019
  • Choose a good bottle and hole up for the afternoon with a cheese plate—the more pungent, the better.
    — Lale Arikoglu, Condé Nast Traveler, 15 Dec. 2017
  • Maggie and Thomas More hole up back at the palace, just in case they were infected.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 9 Nov. 2020
  • Maybe that’s why the likes of Justin Bieber and Harry Styles have holed up here.
    — Demarco Williams, Forbes, 6 Sep. 2024
  • Iron Creek ran down through it, there were steep ridges on either side, and the cover was heavy —— a good place for elk to hole up.
    — Fred C. Mercer, Outdoor Life, 14 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hole up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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