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).
> Some languages even discriminate different types of hole, distinguishing e.g. between superficial hollows, inner cavities, and see-through perforations.
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.
I see this as a broadening of the problem of how we assign identities and names to things. Clearly we can name the absence of things too, and in doing so perhaps eliminate their absence…
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 29.2 ms ] threada. 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).
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.
Also we don't say caroço or solavanco for that, at least where I live. I would probably say "alto" in both cases.