mudholen.

1721 J. Wise Word of Comfort 55 And its well if more then one Third of our Supply [of money]..is not stopt by this means, like Stagnate Waters, in Pits and Mud-holes.

1753 Moravian Diary in D. Mereness Trav. Amer. Colonies (1916) 346 Our wagon stuck fast in a mud-hole.

1784 A. Ellicott in C. V. Mathews Andrew Ellicott (1908) 26 The ground [was] covered with Snow which hid the Mud-Holes.

1830 J. Galt Lawrie Todd I. iii. ii. 186 Stumps and cradle heaps, mud-holes and miry swails, succeeded one another.

1857 P. Cartwright Autobiogr. xx. 314 I thought of a desperate mudhole about a quarter of a mile ahead;..many wagons had stuck in it.

1900 J. Conrad Lord Jim xxiii. 257 I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up by the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a mud-hole before the Rajah's house.

1948 Coast to Coast 1947 71 Those tourist people came and looked at his boiling spring and his bubbling mudhole.

1962 W. Faulkner Reivers v. 101 ‘What you been doing? wrassling with hogs?’ ‘We got in a mudhole.’

1994 Leisure Manager Aug. 69/1 The high infiltration rate..prevents the formation of mudholes, as well as lessening turf damage.

1824 Brit. Patent 5021 (1855) 5 A mud hole door may be provided in the extreme end of the said central cylinder.

1841 W. Templeton Locomotive Engine 16 The mud holes..are for the purpose of removing the sediment and scale that constantly accumulate at the bottom of the water spaces.

1891 R. Kipling City Dreadful Night ii. 66 No. 607 needs repair in..mud-hole flanges and blower-cocks.

1953 J. H. Milton Marine Steam Boilers v. 59 When..the mudhole is fitted with a compensating ring and the internal jointing face on the shell is badly cut up through..leakage, a difficult situation..is created.

1957 Handbk. for Railway Steam Locomotive Enginemen (Brit. Transport Commission) 53 Washout plugs, Handhole and Mudhole Doors. These are fitted to facilitate periodical inspection and cleaning of the boiler water spaces.

1784 in Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. & Biogr. (1877) 1 51 The general curse of the country, disunion, rages in this little mudhole [sc. Uniontown, Pa.].

1851 U.S. Mag. & Democratic Rev. Apr. 324 I could not but laugh at the preposterous vanity of my worthy countrymen, which induces them to designate such a dirty little mudhole as I caught a glimpse of..by the sounding name [City and port of Chattanooga].

1900 Atlantic Monthly Dec. 769/2 Alexander Shepherd did for Washington what Baron Haussmann did for Paris. Shepherd found Washington a mudhole, and left it the city of beauty it is to-day.

1958 J. Carew Black Midas x. 231 The thought of returning to the mud-hole where I was born made me shy away.

1991 J. Caplan Memories of Gorbals (BNC) 4 Tens of thousands died terribly within and around those rat-infested mud-holes of Hell and Damnation.

1933 Jrnl. Negro Educ. 2 270 If the Negro college graduate is going out to wallow in the same mud-holes, if he is going out with the same myopic vision.., it is obvious that the objectives of the Negro college may be seriously questioned.

1938 S. V. Benét Thirteen o'Clock 317 We've all of us been on your back long enough... I know of twice you pulled Jerry Pye out of the mudhole.

1948 R. W. Chapman Lexicography 7 Charles Cannan..remarked that the Dictionary ‘went wrong’ when Henry Bradley fell into a mud-hole. By this he meant that the Dictionary departed..from the scale laid down, and did so by the inclusions of too many obvious combinations.

1972 P. White Let. 27 Feb. (1994) 392 The only thing that keeps me going is to look back towards the beginning and finding bits I thought the most depressing mudholes now as clear as crystal springs.