glory hole

noun

1. Nautical.
   1. the quarters on a ship that are occupied by the stewards or stokers.
   2. lazaretto ( def 3 ).
   3. any locker or enclosed space for loose gear.
2. Glassmaking. an auxiliary furnace for reheating glass that has cooled during offhand blowing.
3. Mining. drawhole.

glory hole

noun

1. informal.
   a room, cupboard, or other storage space that contains an untidy and miscellaneous collection of objects
2. nautical another term for lazaretto

Word History and Origins

Origin of glory hole¹

First recorded in 1830–40

Example Sentences

“Our shop features several large glory holes and benches and a cold shop. The workspace provides artists with the ability to complete large-scale, complicated projects.”

From Seattle Times

Seattle public health officials have suggested the use of “glory holes” as a way to practice “safer” sex during the coronavirus pandemic.

From Washington Times

There are plenty of sexual jokes, including one about Mary Poppins “shagging” the children she cared for, and someone is mockingly compared to a “glory hole.”

From Washington Post

Elsewhere, gloved hands delivered bites of food from openings in a wall designed to evoke glory holes, and later in the evening a palate cleanser was served in the form of a fruit-infused ball gag.

From New York Times

And he persists: The fall 2018 collection, Worlds of Sun and Moon, had pink, yellow and black ponchos, silk bomber jackets and jumpsuits, all punctuated with glory holes.

From New York Times

About This Word

What else does glory hole mean?

A glory hole is sexual slang for a slot in a wall in which a man inserts his penis for sexual stimulation by someone on the other side.

Content warning: the following content includes references to sexual activity.

Where did the term glory hole come from?

In the 1820s, a glory hole was a slang term for a “junk drawer” (no, not that kind of junk). Other 19th-century uses include small compartments on ships and other small rooms along with some still-current specialized uses in glass-blowing, engineering, and mining. The glory, here, apparently goes back to a Scots word meaning “muddy.”

In the 1930s, we see glory hole again as a slang term for a “junk drawer”—and yes, that kind of junk, as in the penis, with glory hole as a vulgar nickname for “vagina.” Glory, here, apparently alludes to sexual pleasure and hole, well, you can figure that one out. This glory hole led to a different sexual sense defined in the 1949 underground Gay Girls Guide as: “Phallic size hole in partition between toilet booths. Sometimes used also for a mere peep-hole.” The term may draw on an earlier use of glory hole as slang for a “gay bar” in the 1920s.

In the mid-1900s, glory holes were so cut into bathroom stalls in order to facilitate homosexual liaisons. With the rise of the adult-film industry in the 1970s, glory holes were also found in specially-fitted booths in adult-video shops. The internet has since proliferated glory hole as a pornography genre, especially for heterosexual sex acts.

How to use the term glory hole

As noted, there is fairly sizeable subgenre of pornography dedicated to glory holes and their vaginal variations. The term is often the subject of many jokes.

Given its sexual content, it’s best to avoid glory hole in polite company.

Note

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.