mouseholing

Etymology

From mousehole + -ing.

Why this word is great

MOUSEHOLING — [Noun] The urban warfare tactic of creating access to adjoining rooms or buildings by blasting or tunneling through a wall to avoid exposure on open streets. From mousehole (a small passage for rodents) + -ing (suffix forming verbal nouns), it is the brutal domestication of vermin behavior for human conflict. Unlike breaching (which assaults a structure’s threshold) or sapping (which undermines foundations), mouseholing is a lateral violence, a sideways rupture. It is the cough of pulverized plaster, the jagged silhouette of a dresser halved by the blast, the soldier’s gloved hand brushing a child’s poster as he steps through—proof that walls are merely delayed invitations.

noun

  1. The urban warfare tactic of creating access to adjoining rooms or buildings by blasting or tunnelling through a wall, so as to avoid the open streets.