cubbyhole means A small, snug room which may be used as a place of privacy, or a safe place for children. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 80 out of 100.
cubbyhole is pronounced /ˈkʌbiˌhoʊl/.
Why “cubbyhole” is a great word
A small, snug compartment or enclosed space. From the dialectal *cubby* (a small pen or stall, from Middle English *cub*) + *hole*, first recorded in 1825. Unlike a "pigeonhole," a uniform slot for impersonal filing, or an "alcove," an open architectural recess, a cubbyhole is a fully enclosed, singular burrow. It is the woody scent inside a roll-top desk, the felt-lined hollow of a child's secret stash, or the paper-cluttered sanctuary of a clerk—a humble testament to the human instinct to carve out a bounded world within the world.
Etymology
From cubby + hole.
noun
- A small, snug room which may be used as a place of privacy, or a safe place for children“To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, the county clerk, the county solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine.”
- A small compartment; a pigeonhole
- A glove compartment
verb
- To restrict, limit or narrowly define; to pigeonhole.“Rivera: The world has changed. It is no longer cubbyholed. I do not think — Friendly: What do you mean cubbyholed? Rivera: I do not think the definition of journalist is as narrowly construed these days as perhaps it was once.”