hollow

Picture an early English speaker pointing into a dip in the ground and calling it a holh: the word originally named a hollow place, not an abstract feeling of emptiness. Its deepest proposed ancestor, Proto-Indo-European *ḱel-, meant “to cover” or “hide,” so a hollow was quite literally a concealed or covered space. Around 1200, Middle English forms such as holow and holgh began moving toward today’s spelling, with the spelling pattern influenced by words such as fallow and sallow. The figurative sense “insincere” appeared in the 1520s: a hollow promise sounds full on the outside but contains nothing trustworthy within. And here is the delightful complication: the related word narthex may ultimately reflect a Greek word for a hollow fennel stalk—the kind of stalk in which, according to Hesiod, Prometheus carried fire to humanity. Remember hollow as a hidden room in a word: it can be a cavity, a vacant feeling, or a promise with nothing inside.