pigeonhole
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See also: pigeon-hole and pigeon hole
English[edit]
Literal pigeonholes (sense 1)
A pigeon-hole messagebox at Stanford University. (sense 2)
A desk featuring pigeonholes (sense 4)
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
pigeon + hole. Originally literal hole for pigeons, later similar compartments for papers, then extended metaphorically in verb sense of narrowly categorizing or deferring.
Pronunciation[edit]
Audio (US) (file)
Noun[edit]
pigeonhole (plural pigeonholes)
- One of an array of compartments for housing pigeons in a pigeon loft (dovecote).
- (by extension) One of an array of compartments for receiving mail and other messages at a college, office, etc.
- Fred was disappointed to find his pigeonhole empty except for bills and a flyer offering 20% off on manicures.
- One of an array of compartments for storing scrolls at a library.
- A similar compartment in a desk, used for sorting and storing papers.
- (figurative) A category.
- 2007 September 7, David Mills, “Do we need to keep the Beats in their box?”, in The Guardian[1]:
- The Beat writers had very different styles and disliked the invented term and pigeonhole forced upon them.
- 2018 May 4, Kaite Welsh, “'Single women fiction': how a genre went from subversive to sad”, in The Guardian[2]:
- Amazon’s new pigeonhole for books about unmarried females is far more old-fashioned than the ‘New Woman novel’ tag deployed in the 19th century
Translations[edit]
one of an array of compartments for pigeons
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one of an array of compartments for mail
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Verb[edit]
pigeonhole (third-person singular simple present pigeonholes, present participle pigeonholing, simple past and past participle pigeonholed)
- To categorize; especially to limit or be limited to a particular category, role, etc.
- Fred was tired of being pigeonholed as a computer geek.
- 1902 October, Jack London, A Daughter of the Snows, Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:
- He prided himself on his largeness when he granted that there were three kinds of women […] Not that he pigeon-holed Frona according to his inherited definitions.
- 2000, Eminem (lyrics and music), “The Way I Am”:
- I'm not gonna be able, to top on My Name Is / And pigeonholed into some poppy sensation
- 2023 June 28, Nick Reilly, “Meet eee gee, the singer who refuses to put her music in one box”, in Rolling Stone UK[3]:
- The singer, real name Emma Grankvist, deals in whip-smart lyrics and striking melodies that offer a refreshing perspective on the world around her, all wrapped up in a package that’s brilliantly tough to pigeonhole.
- To put aside, to not act on (proposals, suggestions, advice).
- 1910, Angus Hamilton, Herbert Henry Austin, Masatake Terauchi, Korea: Its History, Its People, and Its Commerce, page 294:
- These laws were not carried into effect: they were pigeon-holed.
- 1917, “The Looking Glass: Election laws in Southern California”, in The Crisis, number 11, page 29:
- […] vociferously declared that they had the evidence. But no one prosecutes. No one swears out a warrant. The evidence is pigeonholed.
- 2008, Edward Sidlow, Beth Henschen, America at Odds, page 251:
- Alternatively, the chairperson may decide to put the bill aside and ignore it. Most bills that are pigeonholed in this manner receive no further action.
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
to categorize; especially to limit or be limited to a particular category, role, etc
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to put aside — see put aside