any of variously shaped apertures in the sounding board of certain stringed instruments, such as the 'f' shaped holes of a violin
sound hole in American English
noun
an opening in the soundboard of a musical stringed instrument, as a violin or lute, for increasing the soundboard's capacity for vibration
Word origin
[1605–15]This word is first recorded in the period 1605–15. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: crater, displacement, ideal, independent, inverse