It seems to me that “holed up” has only become popular with the search for Bin Laden. Isn’t there a more eloquent expression?
I’ve heard and used the expression “holed up” all my life, decades before Bin Laden became an issue. I remember it from cowboy stories/movies of the Old West and other sources, but I don’t have any literary cites handy.
I had heard it before, too, but not used by journalists. I’d even say it sounds a little too “cowboy.”
It’s a popular phrase because it works so well as an image. Especially in this age of terrorists in caves and dictators in spider holes. More eloquent alternatives:
secreted away
laying low
sequestered
Notice you’ll never hear, “Dick Cheney’s holed up.” No, he’d be in an “undisclosed location.”
Hah, the first two Google results for ‘“Holed up” etymology’ give two old Straighdope columns! I can’t see anything about the phrase that could possibly be of modern origin - surely it applies to centuries-old situations just as well? (In particular my WAG would be a connection to hunting…)
I came in ready to add my tuppence worth and as I was wondering if there was a possible link with 'The Hole in the Wall Gang" I realised that the phrase was probably used by hunters in the UK - we talk about a fox ‘going to earth’ when it evades the hounds and I have a feeling that ‘holed up’ could be used to talk about foxes, rabbits or badgers who have thus far evaded capture by hiding in their assorted burrows.
I know the phrase was in use in the mid-1960s because it was used in a news story I heard on the radio then. (I remember the news story because it struck me as so funny, and I know the time frame because I remember where I was living at the time.)
The news story was about a prison riot, and the radio newsman announced, “The prisoners are holed up in the prison snack bar and are demanding certain concessions.”
Popcorn, maybe?
This is very close. “Holed up” was originally used to describe hibernating animals before it was applied figuratively to people.
Surely we haven’tall forgotten the legend of the Scottisg soldier in the cave and the spider web?
Man has survived by "holing -up"since the dawn of erectus.
They had painings on the walls insteaf of Telly!
EZ
The OED confirms that the original sense of “to hole up” is related to hiberation. Its first citation dates back to 1614:
The actual phrase “to hole up” dates to 1875:
Oh yeah, there are at least three “cowboy” type citations, e.g.:
Although no less than P.G.Wodehouse also used it: